The Whiskey Monologues

Will you get old, old fashioned with me?

I was laying beside you, honest and bare, nothing to hide. The darkness stole our vision, the instant where our eyes would lock. I couldn’t see your face, but I hoped it offered a look of contentment, I hoped your eyes were smiling. You traced the outline of my body up to my jawbone and pulled me towards you. I always thought these kisses were a fair exchange for small talk. I rested my head in the space between your neck and shoulder, my arm rested on your chest. I could feel your heart beating and I thought to myself how little proof it is that we’re alive, a pumping organ doesn’t mean we’re living, but feeling this close to someone must mean we’re coming to life, filling more than spaces between necks and shoulders.  

You dug through your pockets for a box of cigarettes, bent and folded in previous transactions. There were two left and they had our names all over them, waiting to slow our adrenaline and calm our nerves. The small flame from your lighter brightened the whole room for a few moments while we took turns lighting our cancer sticks. Our shadows reached to the ceiling and your skin glowed, something like scarlet. Soon the burning ends of our late night cigarettes were the only things illuminating the stillness. You held my hand and I swore you were experiencing the same emotions, the same nameless emotions as me. Now I held onto the kisses longer, I lingered in them. I wasn’t rushing through these moments like I had before.  

They say you take a little piece of everyone with you. I’ve known that to be true and tonight I felt the sky reach down and carve into our hidden places, peel away at our layers. These nights are the ones we’ll take with us, we’ll carry them in some sacred place, delicate, like emeralds and rubies.

I asked you to recall your favorite memory between the two of us, you hesitated. You weren’t sure, but you said you liked the way the glowing ashes revealed my body when I inhaled the end of the Marlboro cigarette held loosely between my lips. I slowly released the smoke, letting it dance around us. Your voice filled the walls of the empty house and our soft laughter warmed my chilled skin. If the beams above us had eyes, they’d have quite a story to tell. We didn’t need the moon and stars to work with, no, not tonight.  

I searched the floor for my dress after putting out our tiny torches on the bottom of your shoe. I stood up in the comfort of the surrounding blackness and draped my dress over my shoulders, fastening the zipper. I took a couple of steps away, cautious of splinters and bare feet. Then my mouth dropped three little words, “dance with me,” you caught them in the corners of your smile.

You walked over to me and pulled me into your chest, running your hands over my back. It was as if you were reading over my skin like braille when I heard the first line of the song you put on. “I’ll turn off the TV, it’s killing us, we never speak. There’s a radio in the corner, it’s dying to make a scene. So give me soft, soft static, with a human voice underneath and we can both get old fashioned. Put the brakes on these fast, fast wheels.”  

I know it was written all over my face, all the locked up words. You undid them with every clumsy step. I hadn’t smiled like that in ages. I had never felt so honest and young, so careless and open to anything that could come over me. I spun in and out of your arms like the ballerina I never was and locked my arms around your neck like there was no where I’d rather be, and you know, there wasn’t. Stumbling around in circles with you I felt like I was waltzing through long closed doors, taking down cobwebs. No space between, no room for second thoughts, but together could never be close enough. You sang word for word under your breath and I knew, I knew you weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.  “

Hey, ask me again.” I looked at you confused and you repeated yourself. It was then as if a gong sounded in the back of my head, I smirked, “What’s your favorite memory so far?”

“The last ten minutes.”  

Submitted by lovelaceinjuly: (http://lovelaceinjuly.tumblr.com)