So I get up the balls to ask if y'all want fic and my god damn laptop craps itself. Killed a logic board. Ugh. ANYWAY. God, here, have this awful thing, I'm sorry it's a terrible POV and not porny, I'll deliver something not suck another night. And uh, the song is Asleep, by The Smiths. FYI. 


This Mixtape Means 

It's weird not to see him around. There's little pieces of him everywhere, his touch is in everything you can see and it burns and it stings to look at because he isn't there himself. There's magazines and cutouts all over the dining room table, paint brushes glued in place to the cheap ass three dollar plastic table cloth you remember having a fit about at the time. He left them there, drying to the various surfaces, overnight after painting something or other on the covers of your favorite magazines and then neither of you could pull the fucking things off. He said, "I'll buy you one better than new" with a disarming grin and then you get into an argument about semantics and forget the incident that started it, which you suspect was his goal all along. 

More of his paintings hang on the wall, presents and gifts and, in the upstairs hallway, a bit of late night graffiti he painted up because he couldn't sleep. You weren't sure then and you aren't sure now why you never cleaned it up, all marker and paint in dark hues, a black hole of a mural that threatens to swallow you up, more so now than before because he's not there to pull you back, to keep your feet on the ground so you don't get sucked into that other world of darkness with whatever terrible dark things lurk there. Likely, you leave it because it's his, and even if it's dark and a little frightening, it's well suited, perhaps, because he is much the same way. 

Appropriations for his art litter the living room, broken bits of metal and things you both find at tag and garage sales, silly, stupid, old things that make you both smile or laugh or wonder what the fuck. You both know he's god damn terrible at sculpture but when he asks for a couple quarters to buy some brand new old thing you give in easily because he asks and that's enough. 

Some things though, aren't the happy sort of reminders of him or even the sort that are shades of gray, like that damn mural in the upstairs hall. There are dark reminders of his mood swings, of the broken parts of him. There's a sink full of broken dishes, still, because you haven't had the heart to clean them or to buy new. You've been using paper and it's pretty wasteful but you don't care. His blood is still stained into the wood, only noticeable because it's comparatively dark on the light wood, ash or something, you think. You remember him flipping out, breaking the plates in a sink full of water after they'd already been cleaned, angry and irrational, not listening. He cuts himself by accident, the first time. 

You remember feeling guilty the entire time you sit together on the couch, his head pressed to your shoulder, his bandaged hands held to your chest while you hold him through it because, you think [you know], he should go to the hospital but you don't bring him, taking care of him yourself because you know how to calm him, only you, always you, and sure, sometimes it takes a while but no one knows him any better and fuck them, he hates hospitals anyway. 

He hates a lot of things, actually, up to and occasionally including himself. 

He's everywhere you look and it hurts. You don't know why he left without a word, without you. But then, that's what the mix tape is for, isn't it? 

He left it in the bed, the last thing he touched, had to of touched when you were fairly certain you'd both fallen asleep just listening to music, sharing headphones and a bed and blankets and each other, the last words you hear out of him, "don't wake me in the morning", an enigmatic smile on his lips before it's your lips on his. He doesn't wake up in the morning. In the morning he is gone. You are alone and it hurts, it's confusing, and all you have as answer is a mix tape he made you. 

There's no profound note, there's no lengthy profession or excuse. He tells you what you already knew about him from the start. "Music speaks better for me than I do. This is not me. I'm not happy like this but I wanted to be. I'm tired. I'm so tired." Tired. Tired of living, tired of trying. It makes you so angry, so hurt and so sad, but there's nothing you can change. You almost don't listen to the rest of the tape but it's hard not to, not when you need some kind of reason, when you just need to know. 

Sing me to sleep Sing me to sleep I'm tired and I I want to go to bed 

The whole tape is nothing but this, this one song and his bittersweet goodbye that isn't even that. You listen and you want to shake him, to have made it better somehow, as if you could have. 

Don't try to wake me in the morning 'Cause I will be gone Don't feel bad for me I want you to know Deep in the cell of my heart I will feel so glad to go 

You could kill him all over again for being so pretentious, for stealing the words of others to say what he wanted, must have wanted, to say himself but apparently could not articulate. You could shake him, berate him, but there's no one there. He is gone. 

There is another world There is a better world Well, there must be Well, there must be Well, there must be Well, there must be Well ... 

Bye bye Bye bye
"Bye ..." 

He is gone. The last goodbye, however, is his. It's the last word you hear and you don't remember when you started crying but you are and you want to be angry, you want to be mad at him and so many other things but it's not even in you to do that. Tape player in your hands, his goodbye in your ears, you can hear the words he wanted to say, that neither he nor another could for him. I love you, I will never see you again. 

It doesn't make it better, doesn't make you better, but you hold out hope that he's right at least. There has to be another world, a better world. He deserves it, for once, and for all his faults, you can't blame him for this one. 

Because you love him too.