The outside edges of my hands are bruised black
From banging at the bathroom door

I've given up, and let my back slide down the wall
And my face fall to my palms-
Taking a seat in my empty dark hallway that leads to the slither of pink light crawling its way through the bottom of the bathroom door

She won't stop crying
It feels like it has been months
Her, in her sunlight bathroom moaning with agony until I feel I just can't take it
Sitting on the other side with the emptied out sun
With the helplessness of a child
I almost feel crazy

Like she is not the woman I love
Like she is not a woman at all;
Just pain at the end of a dark hallway
The sound of lungs gasping for air
clasping for some sort of reasoning
Hunting for it, but never finding

A sound made of memory pressing its echo against the walls

It drives me lonely

But she lay on the other side against the cold gray tile and I can tell she does not even hear my bangs on the door
Nor the hollow cry she pushes up her own wooing throat
All she can feel is the pull on her heart and the pressure on her chest

Her cry drops to a sob
Then eventually a whimper
And topped off by exhaustion she falls silent

I pull myself from the wooden floors with the help of the cool steel handle of the water heater door
I walk through to the bedroom
and stand mindlessly sifting through my own junk of the dresser drawers before pulling a bobby pin from her neatly organized section to the left of mine
I walk back to the bathroom
I feel my eyes droop as I press my forehead to the white painted wood
I hear her almost silent, but heavy, breath
Creeping with orange sun beneath the edges of the door

I sink to my knees and play with the lock and the bobby pin
Until the door gives way
It slowly opens to her
Her left arm sprawled behind it
Her head curled into her right
Her legs, stacked right ontop of left, push backwards and up against the long backyard window

I lower myself down next to her with the assistance of the porcelin sink
Her face is still wet and red
Her eyes closed and her breathing labored
I curl what I can of her up into my arms
I take a folded beach towel from the brown wicker basket and lay it underneath my head
Propping hers onto my chest
I grab another and unravel it across us

I don't want to wake her
I will give her, her "petite death"
A small escape
But her eyes flutter
To meet mine for a second
She opens her mouth
Letting her head hang back a little
As if to begin crying once more
Like a newborn awakened from its sleep
Confused and in a darkening room

Exhausted:
She pleads no more
She lays her head back on my chest
I feel a few warm drops of salt water
A pull at the rib cage of my black tee
As if to say "I give in"
And then I pull her in closer
To listen to her heavy begging breathe

We both let our heads fall back to the towel
or into my chest
We fall asleep in the darkening room of the fading red sunlight, with the cold tile floor at our backs, with nothing but a black hallway behind us