Savior

She spoke softly in her sleep. Words I couldn’t make out about things she would never give me a chance to understand. The words weren’t for me anyways. Her body was spread across a stranger’s couch, her legs dangled over, her hair covered in vomit. Whose, I didn’t know. She’d had too much to drink tonight, and she’d seen too much in her nineteen years. She was trying to feel something, anything. She was trying to fill a gap, and I was there trying to save her. I knew she wouldn’t save herself. She didn’t care if she lived or died. She was godless, restless, fearless. She was a drifter and I was her shadow. Nobody meant anything to her, but she meant everything to me.

She spent her nights with people she didn’t know, trying to find someone to connect with, but never staying long enough for a connection to be established. She danced until she couldn’t stand, until she couldn’t move. She only spoke in riddles. Her voice was sweet, and her thoughts beautiful, though always fogged by her latest experiment. She was sure every compliment ever paid to her was plagued with insincerity and the only label she put on herself was jaded. She was too happy in her discontent, and I tried too hard to open her eyes.

I don’t know if she knew about me, about what I did for her. I kept her from overdosing, and when she overdosed anyway, I kept her from dying. I fought off people so she didn’t have to. I kept her from being taken advantage of, from being abused, raped. I knew she didn’t mind the promiscuity, but she didn’t understand. I held her when she cried, almost every day.  I fed her when she was convinced she wasn’t thin enough. I carried her when she couldn’t walk. I was putting her back together piece by piece. I don’t think she knows what I did for her, I don’t think it matters. To her, I was a ghost, a phantom, a figment of her imagination.

As I watched from the corner, another background character in her life, she retched in her sleep, rolled over and sighed. I could tell by the way her ribs rose and fell. I’d seen it so many times before. I stepped forward, but stopped. I looked at her and I looked at her and I thought. What if I didn’t? What if I just didn’t anymore? What would happen then? Would she even notice? Would it even matter? She can take care of herself, I’m sure. Probably, maybe. What if, what if. But then I went to her, and I lifted that tiny frame and took her to that stranger’s bathroom. I lay her body down in the bathtub and I wet a towel to wash her face. Then her hair. When I finished, I lifted her again, and took her to my car. On the way there, she reached for someone in her sleep but I knew it wasn’t for me. It never would be.