all you want is to feel enough.

the truth is out there. that’s what forensics shows say. gah, there’s nothing clean or orderly about finding it though, she thinks. it’s long hours of sorting through all the bloody things she never wanted to see again. 

someone had turned the fan on about an hour ago, and she had been cold ever since, slight chill bumps raised on her arm. she was a knot of confusion, literally–three bodies crammed into one twin bed, tucked into one dark nook of the room. it was four a.m. maybe, the murkiest hours of morning and night. surface tension ran deep. on her left, one boy slept, his arm tightened possessively around her middle, his feet twined with hers. when the movie had started, she had turned her face away from him, and he fell asleep. she looked at the boy on her right. she had her head on his shoulder, like a brother. he was holding her hand, occasionally running his thumb over her palm.

i don’t belong to either one of them, she assured herself. the room’s light kept changing–various shades of blue and gray, flickering from the movie. other people slept on the floor in front of them, passed out from a long night or alcohol. she was sober, though, and so the was the kid who had been holding her hand for awhile. he was the only other person awake, the only other person sober.

it had been an awful night. a house, a saturday night. lots of boys, just a few girls. everything was clear until HE came home. all the things she had known to be true about him, weren’t. “liar, liar!” she wanted to say, but she held it in for a better time, a quieter time. everyone was laughing, laughing but he got up (loudly, dramatically) and went onto the porch to smoke a few cigarettes. of course, she had to go with him (the situation demanded it), but, watching him, she was glad that she had never said she loved him.

he refused to go inside for a long time. he was mad; he was losing her, and he knew it. she stayed, even though she wanted to go. he drank a whole bottle of wine and smoked. she listened, as usual. he started sentences and he didn’t finish them. they had to get through the night, so after awhile, she calmed him down. the party dwindled; they all went upstairs to watch a movie. he got angry again halfway up the stairs, burning, jealous. he threw his guitar and then threw himself on his bed.

somehow they ended up like this, the three of them. the boy who loved her, the boy who was just trying to be a peacemaker, and her, squeezed into a twin bed, watching a movie at two in the morning.

she knew eventually she would have to uncurl herself from the boy on her left. he thought she was his. 

she knew now she never had been.