"It's complicated, isn't it?" She was turned over, her face resting on a pillow, watching his bare back as he leaned forward. At one point she might have felt awkward with how exposed she was, but she didn't really mind these days. Her breasts pressed against the cool sheets felt good, and she liked the barely-there presence of a blue, silky blanket covering her backside.

"What is?"

"Us," She replied, rolling over onto her side and reaching out a hand to trace his skin. He breathed in a bit, taking a drag on his cigarette, and let nothing more go than a thoughtful "Mm."

She sometimes wondered when he smoked. She knew other girls he was involved with did too. She wondered if he'd ever offered them to share his. She pictured them - redheads with fake breasts and slender blondes - and wondered a little what it was like to be one of them, before she realized it made her stomach lurch in a nauseous little effort at rebellion. She did not want to be one of them. She wanted to be the one.

The soft sound of movement brought her from her masochistic fantasies, and she realized that he was pulling on his shirt.
Getting ready to leave.

"Can't you stay tonight?"

She knew every word before he said it: "I've got work in the morning."

Sighing, she rolled over, resigning herself to ignoring him now. There was a silence and a halt in movement. A soft sigh and then a shuffle.

"I have to leave early."

A soft smile blossomed on her lips as she felt him pull up behind her: a reminder of how well they fit.

These are the symptoms of letting go.

Dragged up and drugged up.
What had she taken?
Something or other. Lots of somethings or others really.

There was incense spiraling somewhere.
She didn't believe in smoking. But she was a contradiction.
Hypocritical.
Because it was all the same thing.

But self destruction is self destruction and she was self destructing at the speed of sound, wrapped in jasmine and spread out on silk.

And if it got a little dark.
That was okay.
Nightime hides you away from everything that's not there anyway.
Because nothing's really there, now is it?

And oh it was getting heavy now.
Something was weighing her down and she was drowning in it.
Maybe the pills or maybe the smoke.
Maybe herself.

She smiled as the curtain closed.
Oh how beautiful that performance was.

"We woke up this morning to a sky with no air in it,
And all the streets are filled with a thousand burning crosses.
And what we thought was sunrise? Just passing headlights.

Still the choir girls sing,
"Oh lord, can you save us? Can you save us?""