And across town the abandoned grocery store is being broken into

She liked to give out awards in the way she pronounced and inflected her words, sentences as Nobel prizes. There was a warmth that spilled out around the edge of conversation that she didn’t bother to hide. I wanted to know her better, to be blanketed by her voice telling of the tattoos she was going to get, what she liked to eat for breakfast, how she had trouble opening up to people except to tell them she had trouble opening up. She bloomed in my brain like I imagine an artichoke would, though I’d never seen it happen and maybe it doesn’t really.

And this was us sprawled across the unvacuumed floor of my apartment, our clothes picking up crumbs and hair and bits of the previous tenant’s life. I wondered at what she would be leaving behind as we talked, would it just be microscopic cells or would it be hair in the drain and her mother’s recipes on my tongue and an extra toothbrush next to mine. I’ve always been one to overthink a thing that hadn’t even started, tracing the future of every moment to its possible endpoints. I thought about saying this while I looked at the constellation of brushed-off bits forming slowly on her shirt.

I was calling myself a writer by then, which mostly meant that I was the kind of person who couldn’t tolerate a job and who was most happy when he wasn’t. I spent most of my time staring over a great yawning gulf and trying not to slip into it, but I felt like ground was giving all the time and I was headed back to double-whiskey places. Traps traps traps. There I was, though, child-like and simple on the floor, hearing her talk, glad to hear her talk, aching for it maybe. I put aside who I was for awhile and listened.