Graceless

I force myself to stay in your bed, to not fix it immediately, to not follow you into the living room and mostly, to not dress and flee to my home. I try, unsuccessfully, to will myself to sleep. It’s our bed, you often remind me, but while you feel like home, your house does not.

A backup plan is comforting, even though I have no intention of using it. I could pack up my truck with my things at your house in a few hours and be back to my home in about three.

But I stay in bed, tossing and turning while you do your own version of that in the living room, on your computer. When I leave in morning, I stroke your arm and kiss your shoulder. “Take care,” you mummer turning your back on me in your sleep. It stings.

It will be a quiet week at work. I feel wildly out of alignment when we are off.

I left your house and almost immediately stumbled into a strangers lap on the bus. He was kind, I was awkward and hit my arm hard on a pole. It’s purple now and a bit tender to the touch.

Three hours later, while walking up the street, I fell. I didn't trip on anything in particular, just slipped and landed on the outside of my left calf. Through some strange fate, I didn't rip my stockings, but I do have a large, hand sized patch of road rash on my leg. When I got up, a passerby applauded me, "The important thing is that you got up." Indeed.

Around 4 pm, I force myself to go to the gym and somehow lose my balance on the assisted dip and pull up machine. Hard metal jabbed into my rib cage I scraped and hit the inside of my ankle enough to bleed. I walked carefully to the bus that evening, expecting some kind of disaster, but made it uneventfully back to your house.

Later in bed, it hurt to move, it hurt when you touched me. I started to wonder if I broke a rib or did more damage than I thought. Everything throbbed and there was a dull and occasionally sharp pain in my rib cage. You asked if I should go to the doctor, turned the light on, told me we should go to urgent care.

I forget this difference between us, until it stares me in the face. The doctor is my last resort and it’s your first. I am trying not to laugh because it’s ridiculous that I have been so clumsy that I may have broken a rib, but you are finding nothing funny about my bruises, contusions, and possible broken bones. I try to reign in my dark humor and it hurts to laugh anyway. I hurt from the inside out.

You hold me a little tighter. We are fixing it, together.