Okay

This is the morning that it could all come apart and I know it. I have a rope and it has an end and I am there. The buzz of the refrigerator competes with the hum of the light and the tick, tick, tick of the infernally loud clock to drive me mad and I tap, tap, tap the purple pen with the chewed up edge on the strip of wood at the edge of my desk to drown it out. To drown out the screaming.

In the background the phone rings over the blaring beat of a song that I hate as my email chirps and there is someone talking, but all I can hear is the tick, tick, tick of that damn clock. I know that if it ticks again I will smash it into a million little pieces and then pick them up and eat them so the jagged edge of broken time scratches it's way down my throat to settle in a brittle ball of desolation in the pit of my belly.

I have thrown the clock away in the big green dumpster so the tell tale heart will not cause my end. Instead I have decided that too many pills and a glass of whiskey will taste far better. I begin to clear things into the trash with grim glee.

Click, click, click, Delete and then there you were. Not looking at the camera with your hand resting on my sleeping shoulder, caught quietly off guard in the light of a rain swept day. I put my head down on my desk and wept.

When there was nothing left to fill the cracked jar that holds my resolve, I went to you. You held me in the palm of your hand, eyes closed until wisps of okay swirled through me and I could breathe.