Meds

There was always this one move, this one gesture...it was normally when they were reacquainted after a bit of time and the nearness was still a burden...like strangers (but not strangers) who slowly circled each other, slight feints, movements...testing comments and dialogue...slowly perhaps growing comfortable...an iron slowly warming once plugged in.  She would reach out to grab him...sometimes after a bit of a joke, or a sentence that was playful but had potential...perhaps damaging or cutting but meant with no harm.  She would reach out to him and in that extension he knew that the bits of ice that had formed between them had melted, and she was warming to him.  He loved that moment when her arm extended and she clasped him, even if for just a second.

Because she was his prescription.

His medicine.  The dull pain that was usually an absence that throbbed into full blown ache when he dared to let her weigh on his mind with the slight weight of her physical memory against him.

He could not take her daily...she wouldn't allow it.  Rather, dispensed like a cautious drug it was taken in snippets...hours...day parts that were allowed.  While there was never any chance of over-indulging she never let it become the risk.

She portioned off her parts to him like a recovering addict slowly weans off the one thing he cannot live without.

And he would never know when she would provide...never knew when she might appear.  Never knew when she might allow.  The addiction was just as much the mystery as it was the attainment.

She kept herself from him...as much as she kept herself for him.

All he knew was this...that the absence was a blade, and in its continuous portion it drew itself against him in a lengthy cut that was to a bone...a cold, lingering cut of flesh that flayed and exposed and felt like a toothache in his soul.  But small certain bits...little tiny portions of her that she gave to him in words and in writings completely mended...suturing his suffering and pouring warm oils in his wounds and binding them in cloth that she once wore.

He could smell her in the bindings...the sweet scent.  It invaded him and reminded him of her.

It was enough for him to fall asleep...quietly coddled in her sharing, her parts of her that mended him with her memory, her close glance against him, the sweet science of her fixing him and his bitter broken bits...

Only to awaken and find himself completely splintered and deconstructed...adrift and away from her and broken with her absence.

To start the day again, away from her.

Again.