k memoir exxxcerpt

 When we fight I can go from zero to one hundred and all the memories of all the fights I have ever been in, come back. This time I was flashing back on Kali and how terribly we fought when we were under some influence. She would come at me with a fist and I would be shocked and try to duck and sometimes she would catch me on the jawline or jab her knuckles into my shoulder and I have to confess it felt good being hit, I wanted to be, it brought me into my body and out of my head where all the bad thoughts were torturing me in those days. We were lovers in these strange phases of wanting to kill each other. It would last for hours maybe days or until one of us acquiesced. and we made a shaky peace because it was too exhausting to keep on fighting and we lived together. Then we could lie our bodies down and watch mindless tv and drink and wonder if we could ever hold one another and feel loved the way we had before, after all the blistering hatefulness. This was twenty ten and I was thirty-seven and Kali, who I thought at the time was my forever, who I wanted to be and burdened with the responsibility of being my forever, was almost forty. We took selfies of ourselves and printed them out on colored paper after photoshopping them and tacked them to the wall of the room where we were staying. We walked down the paths hidden beneath trees down the hill to Grand Avenue and the last Blockbuster in the world, holding hands, to rent obscure movies. I preferred horror and she preferred crime, and the genres seemed to bleed off the screen and into our life together. We didn’t fuck enough, in her opinion, and she held it against me. And the more she held it against me, the less I wanted to. #katyamills