pity party

There remains, at the heart of things, a lack of something. A feeling of excitement and joy at new adventures that is simply gone. It went away in the fall a couple of years back. I'd been living with her with the ever so foolish intent of building a life together. Not an idea she shared and with the usual callousness ran back to the arms of her true love. The first night she spent back with him I drank alone in our living room. Stared, bleary eyed,  at the beautiful home we'd put together. It had been a source of pride, our little house. It was a lie and in sudden clarity I saw it as such. As the ends of several liquor bottles funneled down something in me went away. Something vital, something pure. I kept drinking until I found black unknowing oblivion. The following morning I sat on the back stoop chain smoking hoping that the world would implode. She returned, hair unbrushed, sex knot in the back and clearly much relaxed. The dead part in me turned putrid and curled away deep, deep inside. It still cuts to think of it. Even in the face of that my heart wouldn't leave her. Torn open and shat in, it still held her close. Unrelenting in it's fervor. There was no real joy left though. It never returned after that whisky soaked night.