He was almost 7 feet tall,
with black oily hair
that stuck to his forehead in patches
like a Rorschach test when he’d sweat.
His bedroom was a dark, cavernous prison
at the bottom level of the house,
separate from the rest.
This granted him,
at first, privacy.
And, at the end, protection.
I used to love
being far away from everyone else in the house,
because it meant I could keep him to myself longer.
Keep him from being distracted.
But by the final days,
I cursed the distance
and would silently pray
that the earth would cave beneath us
and the bedroom addition
would grow closer to the main house
in a tangle of excavated tree roots and tectonic plates.
I silently prayed for an earthquake
so our guests could hear him scream.
He would stuff his nose with cocaine
for days on end
until the rims of his nostrils
were caked with white,
like cement,
and bleeding sores
leaking yellow-orange pus,
from him reopening the wounds
he had burnt into his airways.
He would pace the room in circles,
with his T-shirt sticking to him
in a cold sweat,
and cry.
A cry full of pain and loathing
that twisted his face
like pottery on an unmanned wheel.
He would punch himself in the head,
banging his fist
against his forehead
and temple
until his fingers
full of rings
left pictures on his skin,
and his knuckles burst open.
He would put his bleeding hand around my neck
and press me against the wall.
His eyes would flicker back to life
like a film projector malfunctioning
in a pitch-black cinema,
and before the title card ran,
he would stare
at the space between my eyebrows,
too cowardly to make eye contact,
and say,
“I’m going to fucking kill you.”
And I would believe him.
So I would take his hand
off of my neck gently,
and wrap my arms around his head
like I was cradling a newborn
and stroke his hair
and whisper that it would be okay
and again
he would cry
that Siren’s cry
like a warning to all ships at sea.
We’d resign into a damp bed,
and his knuckles would stick to the sheets
as the blood dried
and clotted
and scabbed
and I would lie awake as he slept
snoring through his coagulated nostrils.
I would stare at the ceiling,
too afraid to let a single tear escape
lest the subtle movement
be enough to wake him
from his docile state.
When he was sleeping,
he looked beautiful.
Like an old Hollywood star.
And with his eyes shut,
and the Siren scream no longer sounding off
from his slack mouth
in the master bedroom
detached from the home,
I became a lighthouse.
Dim glow beaming from my eyes,
a man in my arms,
kerosene running low in the tower.
Praying the gods would unleash their fury
and send waves so strong
they’d crash through the hills of California.
And the ground would collapse
and bury us both in the rubble
