the morning after

I wake up face down on the end of his bed, wearing his sweater, with my tights missing, with my underwear missing. 

Three-ish memories, out of sync. The room turning orange. The realization I should call someone to pick me up, but not being able to make my tongue work right. And the side of my face against his comforter, watching the strings on his guitar sway back and forth. 

I wake up screaming. 

He's asleep, and it doesn't wake him up at first. I am huddled at the far end of his bed, the whitewashed wall hard on my back. I keep screaming, and he wakes up eventually. He offers to call me an Uber. I scream, more, and he offers me a ride home, so I sit in the front seat while he plays that Elliot Smith song about having a one-night stand after breaking up with the girl you really loved. He tells me it makes him think of me. I'm all out of screaming. I watch the grey asphalt. 

I get home. I get into my bathtub and I cry for eighteen hours, with a three hour break in the middle because I'd promised some friends I'd go apple picking with them. 

This is where I fast forward. October - gone. November - gone. I stop going out in Madison because seeing tall, white men in their twenties wearing flannel sends me into a panic attack. I tell one friend, and she tells me that it doesn't mean he's a bad person, so I stop seeing my friends. I buy the biggest jars of peanut butter I can find and live almost entirely off of those. I leave my apartment for work. I leave my apartment to get food, but not as often as I should. 

I keep living in [the city where the bad things happened][Madison].

I start to play [Dragon Age 2][DA2].