Her Lips

"Everyone needs someone. Obviously, everyone knows that. Every baby needs a mother, or someone to be there to give them solace. But some of us, included in this are, or think that they are, or should be, or have to be, for whatever reason, independent. I know how it is, 'I can do it, let me do it, I can handle it.' If I were to lose everything but independence, I'd live. No, wait, I lied, I wouldn't be happy, or as happy as I would like to, and want to be. That someone that I need, or needed - no, not need. Crave, hunger for, breathing just to be next to, isn't. Isn't as in not there anymore. I just couldn't take that, I wouldn't. It's like someone at the back gates of heaven before birth saying that you cannot go, because, well, your purpose just isn't anymore. Even after you've fallen from heaven. Understand?"

"No, I do not..."

"Of course you don't. I'm not in the group most people would vote most easily understood or able to relate to. Crazy, some would say. I wouldn't call it that. I mean me, that. Crazy isn't the right term. Me, being a high school graduate, can't find the right term. But, it's out there. It's like screaming 'FIRE!' under water, when you can feel, see and smell the fire and it's close enough to burn the flesh off your bones. Yet they don't see it, or they do and they refuse to admit it because that wouldn't be the correct way of letting it slide. But, it's not about sliding, unless you can slide up. Because I consider myself a very logical person, above the rest, on a higher level of understanding. Open minded, assertive, aware and in tune. Wildly practical, that's the word, or words, for me. So wildly practical that is, yet appearing to be wildly impractical to the rest of the world. No?"

"No."

"Another something everyone but myself will never comprehend."

"Tell me more..."

"She's not I tell you, she never was! Just another one of my hallucinations possibly, yet so real and piercingly familiar. So familiar that I can smell her hair, feel her lips, even years after they have left my lips, that's how real she is. Or was. But who am I kidding? She is just a figment of my overly wild and impractical imagination."

"Perhaps..."

"Convincing myself is another thing, because she was a real living, breathing, laughing, loving girl. But what does it matter? She's not, or isn't, real or not real, she isn't here anymore. So move on. Forget the past, make the best of the future. Is that how it goes?"

"Yes."

"Not for me. My past is too much a part of my future. If that saying was true or valued at all, every crazy or sicko would be forgiven and let out to give the world another try. No?"

"I can't make sense of a thing you're saying Ryan..."

"I'm just misunderstood, that's all. Possessed maybe. No, obsessed... That's an even better word. Wildly, obsessively impractical."

"I wish I could understand you..."

"Imagine a man in a containment facility without food for a month. Only water. Then, letting him free. What will he kill to devour?? Food, of course. But, it isn't food with me. It's her."