Beth

You put up with it because she makes you feel more alive than you’ve ever felt. In the meantime, in between the sporadic visitations, you lie in wait as life comes near you but never really touches you. Everything is menial. Everything is paper to your mouth. Grey sweatpants. Acid just for the sensation of burning.

And then. She’s back in town. One night only. She hops into your car and you embrace as if years have gone by and you resume your conversation as if no time has passed at all. She looks into your eyes when you talk, a piercing gaze. She wants to know. So you sift through the words in your throat only permitting the most true and most worthy to escape your teeth.

She is laughing. Her laugh is hearty and tangential. Tears fall down her face; she covers her mouth while gasping for air. You are the funniest person alive. You never understood humor fully until you saw how she reacted to it. Now it makes your belly full of fire, eager to recite every joke you have ever learned or heard from the boys in high school gym class.

She grabs Doritos and Coke from the corner gas station. You park outside a freeway turn off. A playlist to reminisce to is muted in the background. You are doing nothing and eating nothing substantial and listening to nothing, as the musical conversation prompts aren’t needed. You are in the now. You are creating new memories of nothing to reminisce to later. Later when she is gone.

She leaves. Your life resumes it’s normal pace after you remember that she only goes away for long stretches of time. You can’t plan your existence around her. She is too unreliable. And yet…

You really only ever feel alive when you’re with her.