When the phone goes at four in the morning I know it’s him. He’s drunk again; he only ever calls when he’s drunk. He only ever says what he means when he’s drunk. We only ever say what we mean when we’re drunk. We spent one summer once drunk half the time, or most of the time, and in the evenings and long nights that rolled into days we’d say what we meant and the way we wanted our lives to look, but then we’d sober up and our consciences fleetingly came back and we’d say we should not have done that and everything would start to look complicated until we went back to the pub to stave off the hangover that threatened to descend and we’d get back to talking about everything and nothing and kick each other’s butts and laugh at the stars. But now I can’t take it, the honesty, then the retreat, coming in close and going away again, and if he can only say what he means when he’s drunk and not other times then it means nothing at all. So I don’t pick up and later he text’s to say ‘why don’t you ever answer your phone’.And I don’t answer that either. Now I have to sleep, the black sleep that comes upon you suddenly and scares you as you’re falling into it for the way it seems so absolute that maybe you might never wake from it. And it’s so engulfing that nothing can stop it, you could be being chased by a crazy ass bear and you’d still fall asleep, it would run right over you on the forest floor. That’s the kind of sleep I need right now.