Calm (I'm a junkie)

I knew this would happen, and I've been waiting for it. Heavy drops of sweat pound like a leaky tap; I feel seasick on land. I feel hot, but my skin is like ice. A vice-like bind grips my abdomen, pulling and pushing me - I swing between jerky convulsions as though I am freezing and sick to smooth, wavering sways, like a skyscraper in an earthquake.

I feel the vomit in my throat before it runs freely from my mouth and nose. Have I been coughing blood? My very own Mallory-Weiss tear. I feel so proud. My face contorts in raw, physical anguish - this pain is unbearable - I need my hit. Lift me from this dysphoric torture; I've been abandoned and I'm so very alone.

I blink slowly, letting salty tears roll silently over my eyelashes and onto my cheek bones. It's been 14,460 seconds since we lay here in my bed, clutching each other like colliding parentheses - I'm coming down, weaker every second. So parched, my mouth is a desert and my breath a sandstorm corroding and stealing every last ounce of moisture I have. My throat is closing up... I wonder how much longer I can last off of this rattling, suffocated respiration.

Every muscle in my body is rotting away, leaving me motionless, paralyzed on the hard wooden floor. I know that if I give up now I won't make it. It's been 46,840 seconds. How many more before you come to fix me? With every slowing heartbeat I see more and more clearly the truth, that you are never coming back.

And throughout all of this it is only in my final seconds that I realise I am utterly helpless - addicted to you. I savour the sight before my glassy, emerald eyes - just a bed that we once lay in, in love - for I am at last able to accept that it will be my last. I close my eyes, letting it wash over me. I am finally, for the first time in my life, completely calm. By the time the next wave of sorrow life tries to hurl my way reaches my bedroom door, I am already dead.

Crumbling in your sorry embrace.