After
I take the pills. I die. I put the ideas down on paper and it saves me. I don't do it. The pen becomes my cross, but not to bear. I am resurrected through it. I cannot live again, but if I die on paper I can be a phoenix.
So my pen saves my life, and it truly is mightier than a sword which could never do so. I look upon the empty spot in my bed and still cannot block out the sounds of squealing tires. Ambulance doors close over me like a coffin. By the time they open again to put me in intensive care my life is taken from me. I heard over the radios before I even made it to surgery that the women who had been in my car had not made it. Had not made it. The paramedic squelches her radio and tries to focus on me. I'm sure she wants to convince me to fight for life. She doesn't want me to know that I no longer have anything to fight for.
So my wife is gone, and even my pen cannot save her. I scrawl her name until it tears through the pages and into my desk. She is carved now. Carved into my desk, but out of my life.
A third degree burn on my arm, a fractured skull which almost collapsed, a road covered in the alcohol soaked blood of a stranger; the things that can happen on a Saturday night.
I pour water over ice and chug the glass. I cannot bring myself to have alcohol in the house. I know where it would lead me, but the ritual helps me, confuses me into thinking it helps. Shots of ice cold water get my heart racing, like nothing else can now.
I pace the room. I look out the window at the night. I lean, for perhaps an hour, with my head against the wall. I lie down on the couch. I fall asleep for a short time.
Awaking from a dream, I am in my bed and she is beside me. The sleep in my head slips away and she's not there. She couldn't possible be there.
Outside my house, someone whistles, and I'm reminded that a world exists outside my own. I hate the suburbs.
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