top of page
Writer's pictureElisha McNamara

The Roommate Paradox

Your drunk lips catch my own off guard outside of the dive bar before we go inside to join our friends and act like nothing happened. I try to hide the fact that you have lit the inside of me on fire, but when you slip your hand onto my thigh under the bar top, I am almost sure that flames are bursting out of my chest, and everyone in the entire city of Boston, except you, can see it.


Somehow, I manage to get both of us home in one piece. And while I start making the pizza that has been sitting in our freezer for about a month too long, you strip off all your clothes, climb into your red bedsheets, and immediately fall asleep. Your naked body glows in the dim light, and little do you know how every fiber of my being wants to climb in beside you and just be close to you. But instead, I just clean the kitchen.


You are velvet and steel. Perfume and poison. Champagne and grass stains. Cigarette smoke and stardust. And I love you even though I should not. But we are just roommates. Just friends. Just drunk. You are you in all your glory. And I am just me.

Related Posts

See All

Harbor of Stones

Neuvos doesn’t get lost. By virtue of his upbringing, waddling on sandy paths from beach to dock to village, and his trade –carpentry–...

Flowers Unique To Man

Halcyon days of mortal youth pass quickly in the presence of forces of nature. The sunlight that once warmly embraced my body will do so...

What Have I Lost?

The innocence that was  ripped off my bones in 1985 when my parents, howling  and shrieking like wolves claiming a carcass, divorced. A...

Comments


bottom of page