Shevek and Raskalnikov (or the story of a 32 day romance)

Seventy miles an hour in a steel machine (box), utter silence.  Bright eyes on the radio, Conor O'berst crooning about loss, pain, transcendence.  Two brains are four feet apart, separated by a quarter century of existence.  Existences separated by thousands of miles of land and an unforgiving ocean.  Split by gender, sexuality, language, and heredity.  Together in silence, apart in mind.  As green flashes under a blue sky, amateur brains go to work, building lines of thought across this gap that seems an abyss.  This abyss of lost thoughts and misunderstanding.  This unfillable void that so casually occupies the space between them.  She is much too quick to accept it.  He is far too eager to deny it.  In the past he has fallen into this abyss, lived a lie, hung suspended.  She won't let him fall, but not for sake of empathy.  She just doesn't know any other way.  Faking feelings is obscene and unnatural for her.  She seems not to long for them.  Secretly, the whole of him wishes for it, for he seeks understanding, kinship.  

She tells him he seeks approval.  She says it is exasperating, tiresome.  She has no idea how right she is, only it is so much more.  He seeks acceptance, of the kind she will never be able to give, for he cannot give it to himself.  His body is humming, tight, uncomfortable, seeking a home.  She does not offer it.  She knows better.  But she puts her arms around him, ends the silence, kisses his neck, and offers him shelter.  

Light Years Away

With enough psychotropic medication this relationship could work

When we are on benzos I can sleep and you don't stay up all night torturing yourself about all that fucking shit that should never have happened
We are snakes shedding our anxious/marked skin
We slide out of it cleanly, we stretch ourselves taut, we can feel our bodies

When we are on oxycodone all my pain is gone and the idea of hurting ourselves seems like it was left miles behind on a dirt path that has been grown over by a green thick forest
All the dropped breadcrumbs in the world couldn't lead us back to that place

Those holes we put in ourselves become a different planet, a world we will never return to but can see faintly in the night sky
A distant light to remember, too far to travel to, out of reach

But, the right pills will teleport us to Mars
On Mars we can cuddle because my hands don't remind you of his
On Mars my hands are only my own, they don't carry the weight and memory of the pain those other hands put on you years ago.
On Mars you are weightless and my hands are feathers, on Mars you hug me back
When I tell you that I love you on Mars you respond in kind, not by saying "you know how I fucking feel about you goddamnit."
On Mars I know how you fucking feel about me, goddamnit

But there aren't enough meds in the world to make this work
There is no path long enough to walk away from here and end up somewhere else
Because somewhere else is still here, and here will always follow us there

Our shadows stalk us, pull our shoulders and grab for our legs
They remind us that no matter which path we choose they will follow us
They will follow us through life and through death
So we must stop running from them, it only makes us tired and weak