I should have a medal with his likeness stamped into it, and wear it around my neck, the noose of my conscience as I am reminded again and again that the devil doesn't change. And neither does the carny though the carny keeps trying to pin me up by my word and I didn't have my word to go on, I was incapacitated and now I only hang by my flesh and it's burned. It's burned so badly and I went to church this morning flanked by Matt and Daniel, both angrier than they have the right to be, and when my hands started shaking Daniel held them in his and it felt like Ben and I stopped trembling but continued to only nod or shake my head in conversation because when I open my mouth the words come out slurred, wrapped in cotton, confusion and regret.
People keep trying to talk to me and after a while Daniel would step out and cut them off politely and finally Sam was done preaching his sermon to me, channeled straight from God and we could go home again where Lochlan waited still, only this time staring out over the backyard to the sea standing in front of the fire pit where my pretty cardigan chars into a tiny black rag, unrecognizable and my favourite jeans meet a similar fate. Everything I wore gone because it makes Lochlan feel better to conjure his flames, setting his problems alight and finding the answers he needs in the sparks that write on the sky.
You straight yet? He asks me without looking.
I stare back without answering. He held me in the spray of an ice cold shower last night until I stopped screaming. I'm straight but for my words. They're always the last to come back. My stomach hurts and my head aches and underneath the burns I have hives but I'm straight and he knows this. This isn't what he's asking. I know what he's asking.
He looks at me, breeze blowing his curls straight back off his face and I shake my head.
You need to get straight. Then come see me. Until then you can stay with him. You're both too fucked up for words anyway.
