I'm Tired of Twins

She looked up

“I'm tired of twins.” She took another drag off of the Turkish Royal she'd painstakingly nursed for the past seventeen minutes. “Mattresses.” So meticulous. I noted how carefully she shielded the cigarette from the breeze, gingerly holding it in a small valley in the fabric of her slightly too baggy blue jeans.

“I don't understand how you can smoke those things.”

I was suddenly on the ground, convulsing with savage testicular pain. My nose sealed with a kiss, a small paper cylinder standing between my lips, pinched tightly closed by her hand. I felt her sucking air through the cigarette, my mouth, and my nose. I gave a muffled groan while she pinned me to the ground. She stopped, and flicked the cigarette away, Then blew smoke back down into my lungs.

“That was a very inappropriate change of subject.”

I coughed the smoke into her face. “What?”

“I was trying to be serious.” An edge of goading humor, condescension. “I was saying, I'm tired of twin mattresses. Tired of being alone.” She stood, her legs strafed my chest while I lay on the ground, still writhing slightly in pain.

“That was impressive.” I laughed. “You're barely half my size.”

She moved a few steps and shot me a disdainful look. “Sometimes I think that maybe the mattress is the problem. Does it say I don't want you to take care of me? I don't want to be treasured, cherished, loved?” She lowered herself onto the concrete bench and looked at one of the barren oaks. “Does it say that there's no room for you in my bed, my heart?”

“Do I say it?”

I rose and looked into her face.

You say it. I looked at her heavily groomed hair, dyed a shade of incomprehensible amber. The rose that bloomed atop her left shoulder and took root deep in the small of her back. The way she wore her light brown suede jacket, the way she deftly revealed her pack of cigarettes, her lighter. No purse. She was self-contained.

I offered no response.

“I guess I can't expect an answer to a question like that.” She stuck the cigarette between her lips and clicked open her lighter. “Metaphor for my fucking life,” she said through tightened lips. She dragged the cigarette and pulled it from her mouth. “I light him on fire take him in and out a couple times, and then he burns away.”

“You're a poet.” I noted the way she covertly rubbed her eye, masking a tear.

“My fucking major. I never wanted to be Emily fucking Dickenson,” she cried. “You know why I have a fucking bachelor's degree in English? Because I fell in love with my god damn poetry professor.”

I sat down beside her and swung an arm around.

“Fuck. You know why I smoke? Because I've convinced myself that some day there's going to be a cigarette that will be the last cigarette I ever need.”

“Not cigarettes. You don't believe that.” I looked at the cigarette, at her, holding her head in her hands.

“Not cigarettes.” A tear dropped on her leg.