Give and take

I remember the morning I read half of Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut while you were sleeping next to me. I didn’t want to wake you, or couldn’t wake you, I don’t remember which, but you were so beautiful I didn’t’ want to leave. So I perched myself in bed beside you and read about potato barns and world wars and artists who are as drunken and lost and fucked up as me, while running my hands through your hair before it became the sails of a Mohawk that told me you were going out to sea and I was staying home this time.  And for awhile I was one of those tragic women haunting the widow’s walks and cliffs hoping to see your red and black sails peaking over the horizon to come collect me and promise you’d never do anything as foolish as that again. But you didn’t. 
Now instead of moving on and going on dates I’m getting drunk in my bedroom and painting wolves devouring rabbits and other vaguely cryptic things only the two of us could understand and only one of us still thinks about. Because I do still think about it, and I think about the day that will eventually come when I forget the exact shade of your eyes, or how you smelled faintly of smoke no matter what hour of the day. 
Because that day is fast approaching and I fear it more than getting old or dying alone, because the single most content moment of my life was spent with my head on your shoulder, watching your gunmetal blue eyes lazily open and close before we fell asleep in my opium den of a room, curled up together under mottled blankets, poor and tired and hungry for our own ambitions to be fulfilled.  Then we woke up and I watched you try your best to shake off the exhaustion that has already settled in your bones too young, stumble to your car full of speakers and discarded energy drink cans and cigarettes, and drive to a job that won’t fulfill you but can only sustain you while you desperately hope that you will in fact, be a rock star someday, and leaving me behind was worth it.