Empty Nooses

The french toast was really good. French toast at 3am always tasted better. They had that in common. Everything else was changing.

You drive too fast. Yeah, but you don't drive at all. I get us there.

You've got the lawyer tomorrow. The realtor's after that. Help me pack up this stuff. Silence.

The remains of the french toast growing sticky and hard on her plate. Her coffee getting cold. She hadn't even been hungry to begin with. It was just pity and loyalty that pushed them out the door. Sat them at that diner and waited for life to erupt between them.

***

It's always better in the dark. Alone like this. Taking care of myself. Forgetting there's a world outside my head. It's not selfish if you're saving yourself. Or maybe that's exactly what it is.

***

What am I supposed to do. That was her standard query. I didn't have an answer. I didn't even understand how she could ask me the question.

I could reply. You should be responsible. You should take care of me. Or at least not expect me to take care of you. But I'd already said that so many times. Pissing into the wind. That's all the answers were. Or ever would be. She was granite. A granite child relying on anyone and everyone other than herself. That's who she was.

And who was I? I was the morbid product of her sickness. That's all I had ever been. A pinprick of light in the shadow of her disease. A pinprick of light surrounded by darkness. Nowhere to go in any direction.

***

I want to tell her that I understand, but I don't.