The floors have been mopped with vinegar and hot water, so there is nothing left from before this moment to provide me with a steady sense of origin. I’ve been showered and soaked and scrubbed with tea tree oil so anything that “I remember” can be excused as only confusion because how could I possibly? There is no proof.

But I’m not wrong. With the bugs as my witnesses, I’m pretty sure I’m not wrong.

It was early afternoon, and it was the end of a scheduled meeting that we made to end all contact. You stood near the door procrastinating, but for nothing sentimental.

“Can you think of what I’m forgetting?”

Yeah, maybe. Is it the way I slept in a full bathtub so that I could be deep-in and not left-out, whether of a blanket or an arm or even warm water? Just because you were taught to ignore parking lot lines doesn’t mean that all space is undivided. Not everyone feels necessary by default.

Or, have you forgotten about the time that I bled on your bed? I think you already hated me when that happened, and I think that now you must hate that you can’t get me out of your mattress. I envy your ability to forget this if you have, I am constantly reminded of my blood. My eyes fill with it if I stand too fast, my cheeks fill with it when my chest pangs. My gums bleed almost every time I brush my teeth. I don’t get to go a day without being reminded of my fragility, but in that moment you had to acknowledge it too and you called it gross. Me, my base, gross, while you’ll fill yourself up on broths made by simmering fish heads and chicken feet. Blood and bones and bubbles of oil, somehow different depending on the host.

The dark florets seeped into the fibers and acted like hieroglyphs, and they told me of monolithic waves and asteroids. You saw a stain and you flipped the bed over.

Do you remember when, a few months after that, you came home from a house party too early and dripping blood? I woke up suddenly and only a few minutes before you came through the door, as though I become an oracle when asleep. From the couch, I could hear blood dripping onto the sidewalk outside, but I didn’t panic because I assumed that it was metaphorical. Like, a bloodletting to make room or a blood pact with the night gnats. But it was a meaningless drip caused by a fist. You had run home which made your heart shoot through your nose, and it was all too much to contain in your hands.

The red led from front street to back door and inside, where I sat up and held an ice pack to your face while you told me the story over and over until you fell asleep. I think you were trying to perfect it, kind of like a stand-up routine, and for weeks you told your story to anyone that would listen. No one ever told you it was gross that you bled onto my hands, or all over the hitter’s hand and your shirt and the sidewalk and under the nails of everyone who has ever gotten close to you. Your blood was a story while mine was disgusting.

And now, we’re leaving each other for dead and no one has made preparations. We didn’t even sharpen our knives. You would rather suck on the ribs of cattle than accept any nutrients from me. I am below scraps for stock.

I like it when my pint glass smells strongly of soap. It feels like I’m cleaning myself with every gulp, like a cleansing ritual. If I drink enough it will replace my blood, and then I can leak where I want and it will be a funny story, too. It’s funny how someday my bones will come clean in the dirt with no purpose, not good enough for soup or gravy. Or maybe it’s not funny, I don’t know.

I told you that you had everything, you weren’t forgetting anything, and you left.

– Emily Bueckert