This is dedicated to every woman who has ever wanted to kill her lover; and my lover. 

It’s been a week since we last spoke. Seven days since I’ve heard your vocal chords whine, those thin and tender little pieces of muscle straining to make out my name. I wish you could know how unremorseful I am; that the intensive isolation that's taken your place is preferable. I touch myself now and think of nothing. It’s bliss. 

Last week you were overwhelmed with pleasure, unable to get past the first syllable of my name, choking on moans mixed with my spit. I looked down at you, you up at me. I joyously pumped my hips and held my breast, performing as your Jezebel once more. I closed my eyes, threw my head back gasping and after a moment I realized that in addition to seeing nothing- I felt nothing. I felt the pressure of you inside me, the weight of your hands guiding my hips, the sensation of your eyes on me, yet I realized I felt nothing. Our fucking sessions were objective- not the objectification born from womanhood but from the sickness of your sex I let host within me. Our arrangement was no longer desirable. What I really wanted from you my dear, was to make me feel something, something good. After engaging in weekly leechings, you left me emptier and emptier and still I looked for the cure in you. And while you never led me to believe you were the answer, you still had to pay for the shortcoming.  

Admittedly, we buttered the clock. Slick hands glided past the one, then the two, how easily three months became a year. As the weeks blended together and our hard boundaries blurred, inevitably some parts of us muddled. Our first kiss was shared at Aunt Ginny’s in a booth opposite to a party of six. I pulled away quickly and scanned the room. No one was watching us. Intuitively you knew I had strict parents. I knew you had done this before. That night you fucked off my fake eyelashes, spending the better part of the next week finding little bits of me around your room. You decided to begin collecting me. On our next date we skipped the formalities. Decidedly there was no need to court me with $20 cocktails. To you, it must’ve seemed obvious that I was already smitten. To me, I felt I’d be made a fool. I tried to prevent this. On my way out I’d make sure to take every bit of myself with me. 

Except I didn’t. I’d be back for my bra. Then I’d sleep next to you and forget my glasses in the morning. When I’d come for no reason at all I’d find you harboring my lipgloss atop your desk, which you mistook for another one of your industrial grade paint supplies in its hearty aluminum tubing. In a morbid way, it was meant to be wasn’t it? Acredit it to my forgetfulness sure, but take into account the perfect set of circumstances leading me to continue giving myself to you. So now you can see why things had to end the way they did. It was fate.

The white blanket, white walls, your white skin on the navy sheets; me observing your milky sleep situated in emancipated beer froth and dried semen. It was all too much. I- rendered motionless by my fear of being known- meditated on our current situation. I had spent another night laid rigidly beside you, close to comatose but unable to let go. Despite having drink after drink my awareness only clung on tighter leaving me overwhelmingly sober. Tension pressed against the marrow in my bones while my muscles twitched in anticipation. Still, I laid stiff. With a deep exhale, you shifted yourself to me. Your left arm came down, not on your side or your front but instead on my waist, palming my navel. 

Just before we went to sleep, you asked to have sex. When you finished, you turned over, giving me silence. You did not touch me. You did not say goodnight. You considered penetration to be close enough. If we weren’t through I would’ve warned you; intimacy in doses is quite dangerous. Unrestricted access to the flesh for hedonistic behavior of the lusty variety is swiftly punishable by natural order. Emotional castration at the very least. By the time you touched me in the morning I had come around to the same unspoken conclusion as you. I looked at your hand laying limply on me, your cuticles still stuffed with plaster from the day shift, looking stronger than I’d remembered. I could laugh at myself for nearly taking to admiring you in that moment. Still, my decision was firm. That was close enough.

Your spackling tool sat on a cardboard box, filled with the miscellaneous equipment that holds your life together, just behind my head. While you fucked me doggy style hours earlier, my mind wandered, sight settling on that fine tool. The momentum sent me forward and back and forward and back allowing for the light to catch the smooth steel triggering my prophetic vision. Now on my back I didn’t have to look or search— I could feel its location. And like the little psychic you were, you sensed I was awake. I felt your fingers splay, grip, and pull me closer. Propping yourself up, you stared down at me and I, up at you. You closed your eyes and leaned in. Alone in your darkness, I feared what conclusions you may be coming to.

I snaked my arms above me, stretching and arching into you, sharply inhaling as your lips met mine while your hand took to cradling my moon face. I was all shiny now and I knew it. I was willing to be that girl for you. Upon exhaling, I closed my left hand around the little tool. I slipped my right arm over your shoulder, holding you close, buying just a moment to secure my grip. You pulled away slowly, tenderly caressing my face as if— as if there was a way things could’ve ended differently. Within a few seconds my hand jutted past your face, your eyes tracking the item you couldn’t quite make out. Just a glint. Or glare. 

Momentarily, we’re standing in your kitchen again. You’re showing me the spackle tool, or putty knife, or paint scraper, an item I didn’t know came by so many names. I suppose I remember the variations because I’m crazy about wall construction. I don’t think you told me because you thought I cared for it. I suppose these experiences are so weighty in my hands now because they still contain you. Holding the knife to your palm, you demonstrated its sharpness. Dangerous, you warned me. The corner of the blade dragged across your palm, steady and slowly. You did not flinch. We waited, disappointed that the danger might’ve been a farce. Then a red thread appeared, ribboning right before us. It was here I forgot to think. I grabbed your bleeding hand greedily and put your palm to my unparted lips. In one move I revealed my whole hand. I wasn’t merely here to consume you. I cared. That’s what ruined everything. You moved your hand to replace them with your lips. Before I fell into your embrace, I looked at it just one more time. 

There was no resistance when I slit your throat, I hardly bothered to do a second pass. I expected the blade to get caught on muscle or cartilage, instigating some sort of violence. Alas, your trachea gaped wide for a tick before spurts began to rain down on me. My vision was stained red even with my eyes closed but I did not turn away. I allowed myself to be. Your blood was going through my nose, finding your way to my throat, choking me. I opened my mouth to draw in air but I took in more of you. 

It’s like you were stuck. I expected you to reach for your throat frantically, to assess the damage or simply out of shock, something. But you looked down on me as I expected you might’ve until you were completely drained.  It wasn’t until I shoved you that your body reanimated at 5x speed, frantically clutching and grasping and dying. I focused on coughing up whatever congealed in my esophagus, wiping my face almost to your level of desperation, but not quite. You were fighting death and I was being born again, baptized in your holiest fluid. I was ecstatic, not frantic. 

By the time I could clearly see again, you were already gone, still and beautiful on your bedroom floor. It was far too messy to go through all the parts of you I never got to explore. Ideally, I would’ve liked to live in you for a few days. It’s for the best I didn’t desecrate your corpse, to have forced you to have made room for me in death. Alive, you wouldn’t have had a change of heart, so I simply stopped it from beating. I desired you in such a repressive manner I crushed every solid gift you gave me, every plausible chance we had of getting close. You leaned into the opportunity.  It’s for the best things ended the way they did. 

Only a week ago I was experiencing all the classic symptoms of depression:  anxiety, apathy, agitation, discontentment, excessive crying, guilt, irritability, hopelessness, loss of interest, lack of pleasure, mood swings, and sadness. 

Today I woke up and felt true unadulterated joy.