"What if this is all there is?" I ask. Wet leaves cling to his living room window like tiny hands grasping.
"It can't be," he says, and his mouth forms a straight line.
"But what if it is?" I imagine his name on doctor's charts, a giant question mark where a diagnosis should be.
"I won't live this way. I can't live this way." He reaches for a blanket and covers my legs with it.
He tells me he's always in pain; that no one knows what's wrong with him. His hands and his head hurt. He loses focus.
"I love you." I say. An offering, a consolation.
"I know." He says, and his voice cracks. When I shut the door behind me, there is a hollow echo, a moan in an empty room.
He flies all over the world and comes home with EEGs, bite plates, wrist braces, prescriptions in orange bottles that rattle like a cough. He sits on his couch with his head in his hands.
At night, I hear him pacing upstairs in his apartment. I want to open his veins and suck this from his blood. I want to open his hands and trace feather-light lines. I want to break his bones and
rebuild them. I want to push his head back and open his mouth; I want to fill him like a wineglass tothe brim, drink from him.
I look up from a book. I mute the TV I tum off the shower and stand naked, one hand on the faucet, the other to my mouth. I follow his footsteps. The living room, the kitchen, the bedroom.
The bedroom, the kitchen, the living room.
He stops. I stop. I close my eyes. Like a snake uncoiling, I stretch out on the floor and wait.