nightmares

I have trouble falling asleep when someone else is in the room with me. It doesn't matter who, or where. If I can hear them or feel them, I know they're there. Sleep won't come. I used to be able to, before my ladylove left me, but since then it's--well, I can't sleep anymore. And in the past few months I've picked up a habit that maybe I always had.

The girls I've had over since I drove her away have never meant that much to me. Sometimes I'd pretend, and maybe even convince myself, but they were never anything to me, just something to fill the time. And the sleepless nights bothered me at first, until I started watching them sleep.

I mean really watching. Once I was pretty sure she was asleep, I'd whisper her name. When she didn't stir, I'd get up, slowly, so as not to disturb her, and just watch. You might expect it was fairly uneventful, but you pick up on all these little details. It doesn't mean anything, of course.

Maybe, anyway.

See, the girls I like, they're always a little fucked up. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Sometimes they apologize for it--apologize! to me!--and I tell them what may even be more or less what I really think, that nobody's perfect, that perfect people are boring, that I wouldn't be wasting my time on someone that wasn't really truly worth my time--something like that. Then I say something that I definitely don't really think, something comforting, something that says I'll always be there.

Sometimes we last for longer than a few nights. I've had girls say to me that they feel safe around me. Sometimes I'd swear that they even seem to sleep better after a few nights. Sometimes I feel like I'm making things worse.

Either way, I vanish soon enough.