Metadata

by Rachel Newcombe

The Paris Review rests in the middle of the bed opened to the Hilton Als interview, you probably nodded off, a bloody cotton ball your bookmark.

It’s my first time back, the comforter is smooth and the extra pillows propped on your side; you liked it that way for reading.  Stacked on your nightstand, The White Review, The Lonely Crowd, and in the drawer I never opened, two unused syringes.

I should’ve known.

You rejected maps, declaring our love was the only guide we needed.

I should’ve insisted.

With a legend, I may have been able to decode your addiction.



Author bio: Rachel Newcombe is a psychoanalyst in the San Juan Islands and Seattle Washington. Her writing can be found in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, The Rumpus, Anti-Heroin Chic, Hippocampus, 7x7LA and elsewhere.

She is on twitter: @rachelnewcombe8

Metadata is part of 101 Fiction issue 22.