"You're killing yourself" she cried as if watching him wrench open another bottle was as painful as if he had taken that same grip around her own throat. And he, as he always did, kept moving as though he hadn't heard anything, silently and solemnly, but felt those words dragging across his heart like a fork across an empty plate. He knew it was true. All the same he didn't care. He knew what death was. Tasted the emptiness before and it felt natural. Her pain quickly turned into anger and his... Just one more empty plate that he filled with cigarette ash to attempt to making it seem full. As kept as he was he felt like a stray dog, knowing that he belonged to someone but waded through tall buildings and empty ally ways trying to find some corner to hold up in. While he wasted his breathe on smoke and gut stained from drowning the inability to cope with things he would never speak of, she lay in bed clinging to the memories of the best parts of him. She remembered the kind hearted man that she fell for. Back then he was a mystery, part of the reason she loved him in the first place. Then with a soft heart and hard hands he pulled her close and silently, as he was, seemed to vow to never let go. Oaths are made by blood and in blood they can be broken. So it came quickly and startling when his blood was poisoned by the bottle. She could not figure out when things went wrong. So did he. In his solitude he tried to justify his willingness to forfeit life and love. In a brief moment of transparency through the self abuse he remembered.... She was no longer there. The moment when she left played through his mind on a loop. He could hear the sobs and the careful words picked as to not send him over the edge. He remembered how empty the room felt without her clothes sprawled across the bedroom floor like a testament to how freeing passion is. He prayed to a god he knew didn't exist apologetically saying, "if I had one more chance to do it all again..." Fate and destiny aside, some souls are simply lost as was he.