08/24/05

the writings of K.J. Stevens

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Trapped inside this balloon

a sober night

Clock ticks.

Heart beats.

Pen scratches paper.

It’s late. I’m awake.

I’ve made it here by being there.

 

Shaky fingers through her hair.

My bloodshot eyes into hers,

so clear and true,

and still

I couldn’t see

what I was missing,

what I was into.

She quieted me with icy water and aspirins.

Touch and warm breath,

as she slept

with her face in my chest,

her lips moving in dreams

living the unseen.  

 

She kept me alive and keeps me now.
 

Alone, but sober and writing,

nearing another difficult hour of dark.

Seconds breaking like rocks

through window panes.

Broken time begging for action,

but I want to stay and write awhile.

 

I want to be where we were sometimes.
 

Under shadowy bar lights

living life through fiction and drink.

Night after night

fighting nothing and everything,

getting so lost in shots, pints, bottles, and pitchers

that I fell harder and harder

each time.

She was patient.

On barstools next to me.

In booths at my side.

Always,

it was her steadfast belief in me,

in this writing,

that somehow held us up,

and if I’d been able to look beyond my lips

I would have seen

I was turning her into something

she never intended to be.

It’s a sober night

tonight.

I’m under the lamp light.

Writing from a different place.

Miles away.

Second hand sweeping around.

Pushing me ahead

into another hour

we will not share.

Pulling me back

into Time,

a time I believed was ours,

but was only mine.
 

Selfishly mine.
 

And in this distance

created by ounces, gallons, miles and months,

I remember the moment

when what we had

had gone.

 

I’d leaned on her until I found the railing.

I stumbled up the steps

as she walked behind me

with her hand on my back,

as if she could save me from my fall.

Inside my apartment

she disinfected cuts,

kissed bruises,

and wiped away the blood.

She talked of doctors and stitches,

the possibility of things not healing right,

and she said she knew that if I could not stop

who I was becoming

I would die.

 

When I was as clean and calm

as she knew I would be,

she turned out the light

and left me alone in the dark.

Bed spinning one way.

Ceiling another.

And when the door closed

between us,

I knew we’d come to an end

because I could hear her crying

from her faraway place

in the kitchen.

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