Bipolar

Everyone

has positive and negative electrons

that's the way God built us

we manage the flow

of positivity and negativity

with free will

He balances it

with consequences

I wish I could see her eyes. Her back is turned, one hand on her hip, her posture stiff like hurricane resistant glass. I can only imagine her eyes, lasers burning through the wall, as if she had Xray vision. It’s worse not seeing them, feeling them peel my skin back with their heat. Worse not hearing her voice. I suffer in the silence of her distance, drowning beneath the surface trying to hide in plain sight. She crosses her arms and gestures toward the wall, as if I’m not even there.

My head sears, slow-roasting beneath her flames. Doesn’t help that my balance is shot like I’m strapped inside one of those spinning carnival cages, and she’s the one working the controls. I need something: a pill, a joint, a God damn plate of eggs. Anything to stop the spinning… to stop the tapping of her toe, a rhythmic, coded warning.

Remove this fool from my presence!

A deer in headlights would be too kind. I’m the dumb animal, frozen and dim, caught in some harsh illumination. Maybe it was something I said… or didn’t. I tiptoe through the kitchen like Indiana Jones on the last crusade, eggshells instead of tiles, trying to survive the trap she hasn’t spoken into existence.

“Uh, I think I’ll go get something to eat… you want something?” The first thing I can think of is food.

“That’s the shit I’m talking about right there!” She spins around arms crossed. She’s got on one of my v neck t shirts, slim smooth legs pirouette on the hard wood floor exposed. The car is closing in and I am frozen in the road, her eyes are now beaming like an eighteen-wheeler’s headlights… which direction do I run? Will she slow down in time?

“What did I do this time?” I can’t help it. She’s the type of girl that will run you down first then back up and pick up the pieces. Therefore, I stood in the road and took it.

“That’s the problem. You never know? And how the fuck you gonna go get something to eat without me?” She said more like a surgeon slowly slicing into me, she was multifaceted that way. It was cute at first, her sarcastic charm and quick wit to go with those sparkling brown eyes when she laughed. The problem was when they stopped sparkling and focused into lasers, then her sweet tongue turned into a blow torch. Took her months to slowly slip her many personalities past me, but it was the quiet one that I feared the most. The one that stood over me at night, still and wordless… a silhouette, faceless, hovering above my bed like I was some infant in a crib.

“I didn’t think you were in the mood for company. Sometimes I wish I knew, which one I was talking too… where’s my friend? The pretty one with the irresistible smile. I smell her, sometimes I taste her but mostly I miss her.” I shot into the dark, a line meant to make her uncross her arms, her nipples pointed through the white cloth like tiger’s teeth. Her eyes narrowed to razorblades. Her lips sealed themselves, pressed so tight they felt like they were suffocating me from across the room. “Just tell me already… you do this every fucking time… but it can’t be that bad, at least your talking.” When she went quiet, she spoke with her actions, heavy steps, heavier hands, a brashness like a caged mustang. She didn’t buck and break things, not physically at least.

“I don’t know where that girl is right now, you’re the one that needs to pull her out of me. We’ve been together for eight months… I believe she’s getting tired of your little routine… is our little honeymoon over?” There it is… her arms open but spread like a cobra with her hands on her hips. Her hair is in her face, dark strands that fall below her chin. She used to keep it long and suddenly, she shaved it, as if it were old yarn to be thrown away. I’m tired of taking care of it… and besides, aren’t I beautiful without my hair? she’d said, waiting for my eyes to answer. She was beautiful, aesthetically perfect in that cruel, sculpted way… sharp features that cut deeper when her voice carried heat. Her skin, a light brown, shimmered like desert sand in moonlight, especially when her mood shifted, and her bald head got on my nerves most days. She cut off the last soft part of herself, the thing that made me notice her in the first place.

“I don’t understand you… I can’t pull anything out of you, just turn that shit on. You have no other issues with turning all your other emotions on full blast. I wish I woke up with the same chick I went to bed with last night!” I wish I could freeze her there on a beach, crystal-clear water, blue skies, palm trees swaying like masseuses in the breeze. But there are always storm clouds… sometimes sudden… sometimes it’s the whole damn rainy season, and then there was that one hurricane. I almost left but when the sun shines it burns brighter than anything I’ve ever known, brighter than her lasers when she’s mad. Therefore, I stay, torturing myself in her darkness, like a lonely junkie chasing that first high.

She flings off my shirt as if it were her hair before she shaved it. Her naked form before me as if I weren’t in the room. She grabbed her panties, dark laced, her scent was pear, she threw it around the room as she pulled up her jeans and put my shirt back on. I gave her a curious look, “What? It’s easier than a bra and top… we’re just going to get breakfast, plus these girls can fend for themselves,” she said groping herself and pulling her hair back. I paused for a moment glad she switched gears again. Sometimes she’ll play with me after I wake up the next morning after I drink too much. There was the first week when we met and I stayed over her place for the first time. When I woke up she told me that I said I loved her. She played along for an hour and finally revealed the truth.

“You are so funny…” she said, eyes mischievous. “You know I was just messing around earlier. If you could see how you’ve been acting... We were so messed up, I don’t even remember what we said to each other. It was fun, though.” That was when she was fun. Now… she’s a wheel in a board game, most of her slots marked Danger.

“Oh, yeah… don’t get me wrong, it was fun. But we can both agree it’s too soon…” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. I spun and played. In the beginning, she let me win… rigged the game in my favor, smiled like she wanted me to think I was lucky. Then the free drinks kicked in, I signed up for the high-roller card and been losing ever since. The sad part is I’m still playing, not to win… just to get back what I lost.

“So there is a chance…” She said as she winked and grabbed my ass, and that was the end of it. She was usually dipping in and out of character, her different personalities for various occasions. Today, I’ve seen five since 4am when she woke me purposely with her movements, her violent thrusts in the bed, her heavy footsteps around the room, silence, until about 11am.

“Where we going for breakfast?” She bent to slip on her ankle socks, red Jordans, the classics. Her skinny jeans hugged every turn of her form. Damn her… dancing before me, hypnotizing me with her movements… the way her nipples poked through my shirt like high beams in fog.

“You know you really gotta do something with those things,” I said, smirking. “We’re going to the Farmer’s Market brunch. They might try to milk you in the restaurant.”

She didn’t miss a beat, “Please… you milked me enough last night, didn’t you?” Spiked the line like a volleyball, direct hit. I flinched as if she’d slapped me with her words, her awkward expression.

“By the way…” she added, voice leveling out. “That’s what we need to talk about.”

My heart kicked up, thumping wild, like that damn deer again, grill in my face, nowhere to run. I clenched my teeth bracing for impact of what followed from her we need to talk bomb. It’s worse than nuclear because time stops when she says it… the silence before the fallout. The next sentence is what sends the shockwave, the real damage, the years of contamination, the invisible kind you carry forever.

“I’m pregnant…” She winked, smiled, grabbed the keys to my car, and walked out the door.

Was this another joke? Another one of her performances? Suddenly, I became sober, dashing out after her.