"Artemis"

The night clung like endless velvet around his car.
The fog was rolling in, and he watched it half-heartedly, between his side ways glances at the girl sitting in the passenger seat.

Mission accomplished, he thought with a hint of cynicism.
I've made her cry.
Again.

"I just don't understand you," she said, brushing the treacherous tears from her cheeks. "One minute you love me, you want to be with me... your playing 'our song' into my voice mail. The next minute I find out your fucking your friends and telling them the same things you've told me."

In truth, he didn't know why he did the things he did.
It seemed like a pretty good way to fill up the spaces where the boredom resided.
It seemed like just another experiment in human nature, more fuel for his creative fire so to speak.

She was still talking, but he wasn't listening anymore.
His thoughts were elsewhere.
Pressed between pages in his leather bound notebook.

"...And that's why I'm going to fucking slit my writs."
Her last sentence jarred him away from his thoughts of smudged ink and ripped pages.

"What?" it was the first word he had spoken in nearly 45 minutes.

"You weren’t listening were you? Fucking typical," she slid lower into the seat. She could feel the tweed upholstery making indentations in her skin.

"I was listening, I just dont understand... slitting your wrists? What's that going to solve?" he reached out a hand to touch her cheek.

"Don't fucking touch me," she hissed and swatted his hand away as if it were a fly.

He realized then that she said fuck a lot.
No, that was a lie.
He'd realized it many times before then, but he didn't realize how beautiful she was when she said it.
Her eyes flashed like headlights in puddles.
Her lips curled like the spiral noodles that were in the Mediterranean Salad she got from Noodles and Company EVERY time they ate there.

He also realized that despite the fact that he knew everything about this girl, and noticed every minute detail... he no longer cared.



It was hard to say how they had reached this point. It was twisted and knotted, like a ball of string that rolls from your lap and onto the floor. You only realize the full extent of how tangled it is until you try to undo it all.

There was a time when he cared about her. There was a time when every waking thought was littered with her presence. Wondering what she was doing, pouring over the things she had said to him, the things they did together.

That was back when she was still his moon goddess. Back when he still knew who he was, who she was. And he was certain that they could take on the world and go anywhere so long as their hands were joined.

But just like the moon waxes and wanes, things changed.
It was slow, like waves eating away at cliffs on seashores.

He lost sight of who he was.
What’s more, he lost sight of who they were when they were together.
He started pulling away. Started lying to her about where he had been. What (as well as whom) he had been doing.

She would always ask him what was wrong, with her saint-like patience, and the good nature of an apostle. He would always just brush it off and say it was nothing. She would eat up every lame excuse he dished up for her. They were garnished with kisses that had nothing to them but punctuation masquerading as meaning.

Eventually though, her patience ran dry. And her good nature was devoured by the knowledge of what he had done.

And now they were here.

She was in tears.
Alternating between gasps and sighs.
Anger and rage.
Hurt and damaged pride.

Heaven help him, he was trying to pay attention to what she was saying.
But he was skinny-dipping in a bottle of bourbon.
Pouring over a foreign girl’s body as if he were rain and she were a distant shore.
Writing sonnets about the broken hearts that he never endured, merely inflicted.


She looked at him. Both of his hands on the streering wheel. His eyes were unfocused on the rain-streaked patterns that criss-crossed the windshield. The street lamp illuminated these patterns and made them reflect onto his face in broken fragments.
He was so beautiful.
That’s what made it so hard to let go, that indescribable beauty that clung to him like dust clings to old photographs. You can never wipe it all away and it makes the pictures so vague and distant.


No words were said as she tenderly brushed his black hair from his unfocused brown eyes. Then she turned away and stepped out into the night.

She looked at him a moment before she slammed the door. His engine broke the silence as he put the car into gear and crept away.
And she stood there… watching his tail lights being swallowed by the sultry fog that was everywhere.

She tilted her head up toward the black sky.
The stars were covered by clouds… there was no moon.
Just a vast blank canvas.
The rain fell in thick globs.
Clean and metallic smelling.
Her clothes absorbed them greedily and hung around her limply.
Water logged... heavy.

But she had never felt so light.