Straitjacket, Poetry in Motion

Straitjacket, Poetry in Motion: To Secure

- to be thinking of you -

My name is Jessica Leigh and I am ...

I am ...

Confused.

How many times did he wake up in the middle of the night, screaming as the nightmares clawed at his sanity?

How many times did she wake up, sweating and crying, remembering a night of blood and the flash of a dagger?

Addiction is so easy to fall into. Leaving it is like ripping a piece of your soul out and stepping all over it.

Getting off drugs nearly kills her, but he refuses to give her anything. She survives it; it only nearly got to her. However, the depression that follows - does.

He comes home on a Monday to find the lights all turned off and the kitchen knife missing. He panics, drops everything he is holding and screams her name in desperation. He wonders if one little drop would've helped, if it'd be his fault if she died.

She is sitting with her back against the wall and the knife balanced precariously between shaking fingers. There's a thin trickle of red dripping from her wrist, the cut too shallow to kill but deep enough to bleed. She looks possessed, murmuring words that don't made sense, crying out for a way to escape.

She hadn't wanted to die.

And it was that inexplicable will to live that had saves her as she climbs slowly out of her self-imposed torment.

He gets to see her for who she really is, a beautiful and lost young woman. He has never seen such sorrow in one person before, but he takes comfort in the fact that she likes him, maybe even loves him, enough to share her memories. Ah, he thinks. Ah. So this is what it feels to finally care for someone.

A text.

We need the money. Now that Mr. Leigh is dead, all is left to her. You know what to do.

He sighs.

It takes weeks and weeks for her to heal, even longer for her to be able to look at herself in the mirror and not hate herself.

But it happens and in the end, that is all that matters.

They had ended up talking in the night, swapping nightmare - though his are all lies. He told her that his Papa had been a 'bad man' who 'hurt his Mama', and she lets him leave it at that. It isn't even close to what she'd experienced with Kaien, but it is enough for her. It's enough. It's probably even more than she deserves, especially after what she does, in the end.

And then he takes it one step further.

She is making breakfast, watching contentedly as the eggs sizzled and popped on the pan. The wind floats in an open window, chilly but a comfort to her warm skin. She doesn't hear him get up, doesn't hear him enter the kitchen, doesn't see his bitter smile. But she feels his strong arms wrap around her waist and she smells his familiar scent, a mix of redwood, grasses, and the faintest hint of alcohol.

She is hesitant, so unsure of falling again, of allowing herself to fall again, but he just chuckles.

He turns her around until she faces him, and kisses her. It is rough, not at all like David's gentle and teasing kisses. He kisses her like she is his everything, his air, his sky, his world. He kisses her with all the desperation of a drowning man, and she accepts.

My name is Jessica Leigh and you won't be able to know if I loved him or not, because I don't know myself. I loved David. That is factual, something that cannot be changed by the passing of time - but him? I have no idea.