Wild Horses

You mix my medication into a pot of vanilla yoghurt and instruct me on how to eat.

Open. Come on. That’s it.
No, don’t chew it, it’s yoghurt, just get it down ya.
There’s a good girl.

Something is ringing, the trill rattles my bones—brrrrr—but I can’t locate the source of the noise. It hurts to move my eyeballs. You find my phone and see who is calling me: it’s the guy that you’re (quite rightly) suspicious about. You pretend you didn’t notice who called but I see your aura change colour and you exhale too sharply.

I start shouting about needing a cigarette. You find my cigs and lighter and slowly walk me to the balcony, your hands on my elbows, steering me through the doorframe. You light me up and hold me back, away from the edge. I keep dropping my cigarette. I cry. I ask you where the moon is, and you tell me that it’s up there somewhere but it’s hiding. I cry even harder, furious that you can’t summon the moon for me.

You scoop me up and carry me to bed. Somehow you manage to remove the ridiculous chandeliers that are threaded through my earlobes. I am suddenly aware that I ought to brush my teeth, but I don’t have the strength, and the idea leaves me as quickly as it arrived. I don’t know what day it is and I don’t care. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where I am. What is this? I just need everything to stop. What is this?! Who the fuck are you? What are you doing? I don’t like it. I don’t like this one bit. You magically produce a plastic syringe filled with oramorph syrup. I am so happy to see you. I tell you that I love you. I love you.

You use your index finger to lift my gums, put the tip of the syringe into my mouth and slowly release the liquid morphine. It is super-sweet, fake strawberry, it bites my teeth. More, I say. One more. You relent too easily, anything to please me. I slurp down the cloying morphine solution and imagine that I feel something close to happy. You arrange my dead-weight body into the recovery position and tell me that I’m safe, that everything’s going to be fine, that when I’m better we’ll go to the seaside, that I don’t need to apologise, that you’re here to look after me. I ask you if we can adopt some sugar gliders instead of having kids. I don’t know what your reply was, if you even replied at all, but I’m sure you would’ve said yes, of course darling, because you love me too much. You smooth my hair and whisper-sing lyrics to songs by The Rolling Stones until I fall asleep.

You say that wild horses would not be able drag you away from me, but I fear that the sicknesses that live in my brain and create so much chaos and pain will surely cause you to walk away one day—voluntarily, gladly, thankfully. That, or I’ll drag you down with me. Either way, it’s not looking pretty, and I am disappointed when I wake up with a pulse thirty-one hours later.

Originally published by Damnation Lit here.