Love should be measured in gas money.

I'm the one you tell all your drug-induced tales to. I'm the one who hears about the weed and the CCC and the aderol and theeverythingelse. And I think you're just as guilty drugged-up as I am when I'm filled with alcohol. I think we share the same search for artifical uninhibited state. Which is why you randomly ask me to go to Denny's all the way across town. (No it's not the last time, 'cause I never say no to you) Which is why you smoke up and proceed to laugh and giggle and smile at me the whole night. It is also why when I jokingly threaten to get up from the booth and walk away, you physically stop me by clamping my one leg between your two. Hard. And you don't let go for awhile. And I'm only being a hardass to compensate for all the things I'm thinking right now. Because it'd be so easy to respond in a way that would lead us somewhere.

Like the parking lot.

Go. Smoke up again. Because things are about to get physical and I just suggested a reinactment of Fight Club as I start jumping up and down with a cigarette in my mouth, warning you not to punch me in the ear. I decide to finish the cigarette first as I sit on the hood of my car. You take another hit and come up real close to me, signalling with your hands that you're going to blow it in my mouth. Maybe if things were different, I would have let it happen, but the reality is you chose her and you should stop finding justified excuses to kiss me. And I believe there may have been more to those playful slaps on the face that started off like you were resting your fingers on my cheeks. And all the offers to light my cigarettes. And all the times you got up close to take a drag off mine.

Love should be measured in physical pain. Do you punch her? Does she like it? Does she play a good Tyler Durden?

You drop her name like I want to drop this thing I have for you. You insert her like Tyler does pornography into children's films. Bits and pieces. Knowing I notice while simultaneously hoping that I don't.

I don't know what you expect me to say about that.

I could attain closure much more quickly if you didn't change for her, and if she wasn't everything that I'm not. And I can't stop the what-if's because you like what I am. I like what I am. So when did you start liking what she is?

I am not inadequate.

We are
we are
desireable

I don't think I'll ever meet her.

And I should've left you in that parking lot tonight because I adore you.

--Lauren

[what was ... what will be]