Disa Turner

She can tell when you’re good and drunk because it’s when you start
Vehemently.
Asserting.
Your.
Sobriety.
She contends that your current diminutive doesn’t suit you.
At times, you’ve suspected she prefers Will. She is your writers’ block personified,
until she’s mead, absinthe, syrupy sweet, warm, melting into your skin, tearing through your veins, igniting synapses until there’s no fighting it.
There never was.
You’d think she, an artist herself, would’ve known better. The whole town at the bars, and you and her, drinking each other, instead.
After the fact, you both look like a car accident, bruised survivors climbing free from the wreckage of mangled sheets. She says something in French you can’t comprehend. To keep the mystery alive, you guess. You discuss the nature of Truth, for a while, to put off the inevitable. But she believes in lies, that the truth, like luck and good sex, is as much as you make it. She’s probably quoting a poem you’ve never read.
You don’t read them.
You write them.
You know she must love you, but it’s not enough to make her stay.
Not tonight.
Then she’s gone.
You stand in the dark lot accompanied by the night’s
last cigarette, watching the contents of your lungs, your smoke, her breath,
escape    mingle     disperse
as one into the night, to wherever the ethereal goes home to roost.
A door slams.
The cigarette slowly burns itself to death on the asphalt, a pinprick of fire, a tiny nicotine beacon, bobbing resolutely in a vast, black sea.
She’ll be back again tomorrow.
God.
You hope
she’ll be back
again
tomorrow.

Disa Turner is a musician, artist, traveler, nanny, and fairy dogmother from Pennsylvania. She will be attending the University of New Orleans this fall in pursuit of a creative writing MFA. Her work has previously appeared in Warren, Digital Papercut, and Riding Light Review.