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67 Days with the same tube of toothpaste is a record. I sometimes get so disgusted by the cap being left open and the crust forming near the top that I toss it out, but you’ve been staying over more than before, so you make sure to close it and put it back in the medicine cabinet. I haven’t been on pills for a long time, so I think I should call that cabinet something else. The toothpaste cabinet perhaps. Yeah.

67 days with this same tube of toothpaste, and you failed to mention after waking me up early with your loud shower and gargling, that I was going to have to roll it up. 68 days ago I bought you a tooth brush, soft, green and complementary of the red one I’ve been using longer than the dentist recommends. I’m pretending to be poor. I buy books, and when I have a little money left over I buy food and with the change I buy necessities; toiletries and toilet paper. You didn’t mention it. You brought up the white towels on the floor that needed to be picked up, the phone call I didn’t answer at 4am, and my inability to love you like you deserved to be loved. I love you like you’ve allowed me to; limited and sometimes funky.

I’m not going to work with my breath smelling like the Golden Grahams I had at 2am and a homeless man’s back pocket. I’m rolling this tube in hopes there’s more left. I’m texting you on your way to work hoping there’s more left. Send me more than one word responses, and kiss me on forehead and say you’ll see me when you get off. I have to cut this thing open and scrape the insides. I have to dissect your soul to make sure I haven’t depleted it. Have I?

There is too much milk in the refrigerator; soy, coconut and lactaid. I have 376 cotton swabs left, and way too much cologne. Four bottles of shampoo, two bars of soap and 2 body washes. Why did we let the toothpaste get to this point? Why didn’t you tell me before I woke up?

“What if we lived here together�� is what I wanted to ask kinda loudly over the Roberta Flack playing at the end of Waiting To Exhale. I sat quietly, facing David Sedaris�� Me Talk Pretty One Day, wondering if now was a good time to read it. I want to speak to her about coming into this space. She’s already occupying so much of my time. So much of everything that pulses hard. Starting a book now isn’t the smartest idea. Asking her to bring her books to my bookshelf is important. It’s worth throwing away that extra copy of Shel Silverstein’s Where The Sidewalk Ends, making Post-Blackness, The Browder Files, and the magazines Niema gave me vertical. There’s space here. There’s a man here who believes children could run through the house dirtying up everything as long as they know how to clean. And she’s smiling, believing the four women she’s watching ended on a happy note. I don’t have the guts to tell her about what Johnny said was going to happen in part two.

“I,�� I start, and she turns to look at my lips moving, rehearsing for some grand proposal. “I think it’d be  good idea if you brought a few books over and left them on my shelf.�� I’m a writer, and this is as good as it gets. She didn’t need a ring, just the ability to borrow a bookmark whenever she needed, or unwritten or unspoken permission to take my copy of Cecil Brown’s The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger with the original cover. “You gonna clear off space for me? What about the bedroom,�� asked liked a woman who learned from a mother who probably loved men who spoke in circles. “There’s space there too,�� I said, being a man who hates squares.

The smells of steamed broccoli, quinoa and burger patties from Whole Foods with nothing but the sea salt your dad brought back from the Himalayas to be used as the only seasonings are no longer welcomed here. Neither is cocaine, MDMA, your ex-boyfriend’s ecstasy or red wine on weekends. Specifically Friday nights between 7:30pm and 12:23 am. I’m tired of looking at white women with pink sweaters gossiping about me and blue skies through windows that need curtains. It’s midnight, and this sky can’t really be blue. No more drugs! 

I enabled your tendency to be vulnerable and weak, and your habits of crying when 6,000 others were present for the music. Drugs are the gateway drug. I can’t remember is Larry showed me the bleeping video before or after you, but I never showed you the effects love has on the brain. I never followed through with my beliefs that we couldn’t possibly love each other, only hold, kiss, fuck, cuss and make each other numb. I couldn’t have possibly loved you on my own. Imagine a night of chopping up shrooms for tea and sitting on your blue couch, foot to foot. Had we gone to Joshua Tree that night I may have killed myself on our birthday. Foot to foot, staring at each other’s big toe, laughing. Foot to foot wondering what things would be like had that girl never bought me a new iPhone, or had I thought you were just too forward and not shown up in Venice. Foot to foot you are now with him, and me staring at dull browns and yellows hoping I don’t need drugs to make them bright again.