someone, somewhere.

i get nauseous when i look at nathan’s face in bed.

it’s a wednesday night, maybe past two in the morning, and he’s asleep. i trace every curve of his face in my head and pray to god that i don’t accidentally shift back. i curl up into a ball whenever he spreads out. sometimes even sit up, touching a very specific part of my nape where i expect to find a smooth curve waiting for me.

i have it here, a small bump i’ve had since childhood. i like to think it’s the root of all my issues and the reason the world has gone to hell. if i’m feeling particularly emotional, i touch my head and push like a button, thinking that i secretly have a gift from god in the form of a whateverthefuck on the back of my head.

but that leads into some form of religious psychosis my family lineage hasn’t seen since my grandma adopted my mother. i look at him and think hard. i think about his family, and what psychosis they’ve gone through. maybe he is the form of psychosis, that his “vampiric” turning is really some sort of psychological disease constructed and fueled by a medical issue.

but why would i say that? he cried the first night. he told me. he collapsed on the bathtub and sat. how can someone die and come back, with their only confidant being a girl who didn’t think her crush on him would go anywhere? the same girl who lies next to him in the dead of night and swears she can hear the sea humming if she stops breathing? the same girl who is his complete opposite? i’ve felt it before.

i’ve felt what it’s like to be loved entirely and eaten whole by the overwhelming sensation of someone pressed against your nerves. and he’s felt it too. he’s too calm for someone willing to accept the suicidal tendencies of a brother gone too soon and deciding to never say anything to his family. i wonder too much what he’s thinking, and i know he can tell. he hates to look at me when i stare.

it’s an awkward turn of his gangly neck, hands groping each other in a desperate fidgeting attempt. i stare and look forward like i wasn’t. it’s silence, before he clears his throat and says he likes my eye glitter. he’s almost akin to a teenage boy at his first dance in sophomore year.

he is awkward, and disgusting at the same time. he’s awkward, disgusting, perverted, and arrogant. and he’s sweet, and kind, and loving, and shy. my horrible norm-core, socially celibate, wannabe emo canadian boyfriend. my annoying, arrogant geek who gets major anxiety about anything.

"i don't have a pulse," he told me before crying like a child.