I extracted exactly one promise from you before you left, just one, yet even that you could not keep. Do you remember that morning? I woke on cold tile to the taste of vomit and a headache that pulsed in time to the sound of your lighter snapping open and closed, open and closed. I’d overdosed before so I knew what it felt like, though not since we became… whatever we were. I was already babbling apologies and trying to force myself up on trembling arms when you shoved me back down to the bathroom tile. You had that fucking knife of yours against my throat and I truly thought it was the end, that I’d bleed out while laying in a pool of my own vomit. It would have served me right. You didn’t finish things, though. You just held my gaze as you pressed that cold little blade into my skin and said very, very softly, “This will not happen again, do you understand? Your life is not yours to end. It’s mine.” As you walked away I asked, impulsively, “Do you promise?” You paused in the doorway for a brief second before replying, “Yes.”
Yes. You promised. And yet here I am, as alone as I was before you came. You are gone and I wait like a fool for an end I swore to you I would not hasten. Please, darling, could you keep this one promise, could you do just this one thing for me? I asked so little of you while you were here and you know it. You owe me this. Please, don’t make me break my word to you by breaking yours to me. I can’t wait any longer.
Only Fragments 