At first she was his muse, but now she was his writer’s block. Everything was great, but great is nothing new; great is just a better good. There are no stories in good. Happiness is short lived for most artists. It’s like a Zen mind, a thoughtless mind, eventually you notice it and in noticing it you destroy it. He wrote all the poetry he could about her. He did all the thoughtful things he could do for her. He was empty now and felt it. Pain was an old friend of his, depression his oldest, but no art would come from this pain. This was a new pain and a new depression. He felt safe with her. That thought gave him fear. That thought was commitment. Something he thought he’d only have with his art, but there he was with her, telling her he doesn’t want anyone else. She agreed and his art died.

Inspiration couldn’t be sucked out of his fingertips and anytime she tried they just ended up in bed or against a wall. There was still his day job, his night job, his anytime he was scheduled to work job as a server. It wasn’t too nice of a place; he could have made more at a fancier place. Not much more though, he was the best tipped waiter there. He enjoyed the speed of it and enjoyed being one of the few that could help out anywhere they needed him. He loved it a little less though now that he saw it as his real job. The new slight distaste didn’t affect his tips. He always hated the customers and still faked that he loved them all just as well.

He still felt motivated to create and hated everything that he did. He looked over a poem that he wrote when he first was getting to know Emma. When they would both flirt and tease each other before they became each other.

The warmth of your body is still on my bed
It lurks with your scent
You told me what it was
The components, the mix
I remember your hair is strawberries and cream

Being teased is only fun for so long
You probably think the same thing

It wasn’t that good of a poem, but it was a happy memory. She would lay her head on his arm and let him play with her hair. Sometimes they would lay with cheeks touching, stealing each other’s breaths. She ran a few degrees hotter than normal, which he liked because it meant her skirts and shorts were shorter and would be worn more. Her style was the first thing he noticed about her. They would still lie that way. They were still that much in love.

His art was still dead. He thought about having all his old writing buddies over and having a eulogy for it, but that would have been too creative. He washed her smell off his hoodie to see if he could do without her. He couldn’t. He had her wear it around the house. It’s the only thing she wore and usually she was naked. She had a beautiful body; Italian skin, the color of aged porcelain. He’d tried other ways to see if he could live without her, like sneaking out of their bed to sleep on the sofa. He woke up feeling lonely and dead inside and would walk back to bed where she would snuggle up to him and make him feel alive again.

She thought her love would be enough, but it wasn’t. She thought about what was wrong with him and she knew it wasn’t his art, but it was what made him an artist. He was a depressive. She was afraid to say anything since he made a few jokes about all the pills she had to take. Those pills made it possible for him to love her and she wondered if he understood that. She thought about how she could bring it up softly, but then one day she felt him pull away from her and into himself. She couldn’t lose this one. She told him he needed help and he agreed. She had to take him everywhere or he wouldn’t have gone he was too afraid to get help. His parents brought him up in a house with a bi-polar sister they tried to cure naturally. There was a stigma to admitting you needed help in his family and she helped him get over that.

He started writing again; more than ever, with a clarity that he never knew.

He wrote a poem called Emma.

You found me in the dark and stayed with me there
You let me love you and trust you more than anyone
I would have broken your heart if you never found me help
Thank you for stopping me.

His medications changed him, for the better, but still they changed him. He became calmer and less self-destructive. He lost some of the things people loved about him but, he didn’t lose too many friends over it. He felt like he didn’t lose those friends either, but that he simply out grew them. With his new sober mind, that’s what he called it, he didn’t see how he was friends with some of the people he used to call his brothers and sisters. Emma loved him even more now that all the bad parts of him were gone as if by magic. He became perfect through prescriptions, and they became perfect through love.