Today I thought, I wish I was coming home to you. But my mind flicked through all the lovers and never landed on anyone. There is no ONE.
If I was coming home to you, you'd hold me, too hard and too long and I would feel like breathing was something I couldn't quite do all the way. We would be surrounded by cats. Five of them. 3 are yours and 1 is mine and 1 is ours. If I was coming home to you, i'd wrap my arms around you from behind while you did the dishes. Take a deep breath of you. Your hair and shampoo and sweat. And it would all feel like I was standing outside of myself playing a part you never asked me to play. Here I am a dutiful husband and a dutiful wife. Your skin smells of marriage and betrayal. Someone else's bed. If i was coming home to you, there would be so much silence. No laughter. I can't think of the last time you made me laugh, did you ever? We were always serious and intense. Always the last five minutes of the climax before the commercial break when the two protagonists are standing in the rain breaking up over stupid things. But the truth of that moment is that they just don't really love each other. Didn't I tell you my dear, I don't believe in love.
If I was coming home to you i'd walk in the door after a 12 hour shift and you would be passed out half on the floor, half on the couch. A drunken stupor. The TV still on, some crime show or other. Cigarette butts and empty liquor bottles everywhere. Today's haul. If I was coming home to you, my bedtime routine would involve cleaning up your mess over and over again. Leaving you on the couch until you came to. So much silence, always going to bed alone. Until you woke me in the middle of the night. Freshly showered and calling me baby. If I was coming home to you, there would be laughter, and dysfunction. A co dependency that fed both our addictive personalities. A push and pull that meant we cycled through being everything and nothing over and over again. In the everything phase we would be manic together. Leaping into adventures we have never tried before, pushing the line further and further and then fucking all night. In the nothing phase you would fuck strangers in alleys without protection and I would cry in someone else's arms. I've never wanted to fix you and if I was coming home to you I would try and it would kill me.
If I was coming home to you we would laugh, often and it would drive me insane. I would say mean things just to hurt you and watch as the insults went over your head. Your love would drown me. but I would feel it. If I was coming home to you I would wonder who else you had let into our bed. The way you let me in when you were seeing her. I would hate you even as your lips between my legs made me crumble into a heap. There would be no jealousy or possessiveness holding us back from finding ourselves wherever that may be. And there would be no jealousy or possessiveness to show that we really wanted each other. No anger. No passion. And every time the more you wanted me, the less I would want you. There would be no pull there. You wouldn't be enough and I would be resentful.
If I was coming home to you, you would demand so much from me. To be open, to be honest, to bleed myself onto you every day. And when I asked for the same, you would run. Hide behind maybes and existential bullshit. We would spend hours talking about all the girls we've hurt before. Promising them forever with our actions and being an asshole with our words. And I would know I wasn't special, and I would know I was next. If I was coming home to you, I'd let you bury me in your demands. Harsh words and gentle caresses. The kind of person who would beat me and I'd let you and say I enjoyed it. Say i deserved it. Your anger hiding behind intelligence. You would find a way to reason me out of my sanity. Out of my self preservation, so good at what you do. If I was coming home to you our passion would turn into something bitter and ugly. Like a drug, we would drown each other.
If I was coming home to you things would be good until they weren't. You make me feel until you don't. I would want you so badly, until I didn't. You wouldn't be enough and I would so want you to be, so badly. I would chip away parts of myself so I could fit into a mold that you would be enough for. I wouldn't say when I wanted more because I would feel your distaste in my mouth when you tried to kiss my worries away. If I was coming home to you, I would not be enough. And the more I chipped away at myself to try to make myself fit into what I thought would make you happy, the less you would like me. If I was coming home to you, it would be great at first. I'd marvel at the way you could get lost in things so easily, and resent the way I was never a thing you could get lost in. There would be so much unsaid and unfulfilled. We would be so unfulfilled. And you would know it, and resent me for it. And I would know it and resent you for it. Both staying out of a sense of duty not love, not affection, not passion. Engulfed in the supposed to, coming together but never connecting. As if the world gave us a list of the things we were supposed to love and we ticked off all the boxes for each other but never quite being enough. Killing ourselves over it.
