Dissolution

His insecurities manifested themselves leisurely, with lies emerging one by one like bloated bodies in the Mississippi. Each individual spoonful he lifted to my lips tasted most bitter, yet bite sized and always served with an alibi shooter. Nourished on deceit, I did not notice how thin I had become. Compromise. The slivers of a once perfect self shaved and contoured to compliment another person. Edges rounded, curves adjusted. Microscopic pieces so slowly eroded away that I could not recognize my own skeleton at the end of the day, piled there at his feet.

But the cruel thing was, it felt like the mistake was mine, for trusting you.

David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

Graveyard

The job was fun. The money was decent.
Life was exciting. This was our time.

After a busy night of emergency duty, I would leave the hospital just after eight. It was all I could do to stay awake on the drive home in notoriously tedious rush hour traffic. He usually left before I got home in the morning. I would be gone before he came home after five. My fourteen hour night shifts and his average daytime schedule meant that we sometimes missed each other for days. But I was a night owl and the best part of a graveyard shift was working only three days a week.

The apartment was quiet. Blackout curtains in the bedroom were drawn closed and the warm, orange glow of the hurricane lamp pooled on my pillow. He had turned down the bed for me before he left. Mellow, barely audible music spread across the room from the tiny radio on the dresser. Even at nine o'clock in the morning, climbing into bed was irresistible. He did this for me.



These days, I try not to dwell on the good parts. They double-cross me. That he could be so attentive and charming through all of the mistakes...
It all becomes my fault.