remind me how to write

having been drinking, i saw the ceiling closer and further away than usual, the texture magnified and swirling and dancing for my attention, dotted with the distance of how little i gave a fuck. pulling the blanket up, careful to cover my tits but only just, i was waiting for you to vault back into bed, graceful and improbable like your roommate already had twice, either time without bumping his head or pulling a muscle, or so it seemed in the moment: the next day's usually slightly different in the telling.

i don't remember you vaulting so i'm inclined to believe you must've disappointed, clambered and laddered, crushing my knees as we tried to turn your tiny lofted single into a double. there was perhaps snow on the ground, and a freeze coming through the bricks at my back, but in this moment, it felt good in the way that every sensation felt pretty good, and i was warm enough to be just in my panties against your also warm enough hip, legs redistributed one of each apiece.

i was clutching at your shoulders, chest pressed into the heat of your back, during the heat of my conversation with him. you listened and added and listened and we all talked with the easy easy sureness and earnest of a lot of shots and several mixed drinks between us, three forgivably good looking individuals in their underwear, eager to talk about love and sex and philosophy and the universe while the shoddily modeled 3d environment of our real lives was turning in slow lazy circles under the beds.

a girlwhoisafriend was in love with him, and the room was full of the knowledge, grinding against our tongues and sucking on his disinterest. with my lips on your shoulder between speakings, i got so sad for him, with his blackandwhites and misplaced idealism. he talked about not being able to cry and you even agreed with me, without my pleading or anything, that crying is one of the best things, that nothing compares to the hot lines of salt that draw down your face to remind you which way is up. he had nothing to cry about, even when he was sad.

i wanted to tell him, that is something to cry about. so is this, and this, and this. everything. cry for everything and nothing and yes and no and because and why and fuck you. i tried to tell him that, that you're supposed to cry because things are so great, and because isn't that just it. i don't think he got it, and i don't think you really understood what i was going for either, so you couldn't even bail me out, and i just had to shut my mouth and think about crying about not being able to say what is stuck behind my flushed cheeks and embarrassed lips.

we lingered a little longer on the drunk-emphatic precipice of real understandings and then backslid into talking about times we got high. maybe we got each other off under the covers, with him just right there, or maybe i just wanted us to and we fell asleep instead, all warm faces and cold feet.