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1 Year 6 Months 

Tonight, S and I smoke Camel cigarettes on an Allston stoop.

 "I am so upset," she says and giggles, the acrid tendrils of smoke curling around her face.

Upset is the word that we use when we need to simplify the pain. S's mother had broken into her apartment today because she couldn't be alone. She tried to kill herself in McLean Psychiatric Ward when she was pregnant with S because her husband was gone. Her mother piles her house high with garbage she is incapable of letting go of. S only rests on the stoop for a brief smoke in between unannounced visits.

"I keep finding these playing cards around Allston," S says and takes another drag.

"The other day I found a two of hearts ripped in half. I picked it up and hid it in a drawer."

Some hipster had carelessly shredded the card and laid it out on the concrete. She pulls out a nip of bitter bourbon, holds her nose, and swallows.

"I dread when he comes home," she says and places the empty bottle beside her on the steps. "That is why I drink every night."

Her boyfriend never notices her depression and the razor-sharp pains in her spine that leave her doubled up in bed for days. He just whines that she has no backbone.

"We shouldn't dealing with this constant turbulence," she says, stubbing out her cigarette.

"But it isn't even up and down anymore," I say. "At this point, it is just a silent death."

"The next time I see a card," I will save it and bring it to you," S says. 

And then the dead silence was deafening.

2 Years

"Baby, I promise that things will be different now. Please just give it a chance," H says the next night on Harvard Ave. "I'm not the monster that you think I am."

I am twenty-five now and I know he will not change for me.

S had given me the shredded two of hearts earlier and I had taped the halves back together. The heart was bound by shoddy, clear tape.

I stand with him underneath the illuminated Western Union sign. He kisses me and I feel nauseous.

I came here because I was angry, my insides blistered by the marred years and criticisms, but he only has a few minutes.

"We can't talk about this now," he says. "The band might walk by."

 "I don't want to pretend we're happy in front of them anymore, " I say, averting my eyes upwards towards constellations hidden by the city smog. 

He disappears into the inky night and I know it will not be different.

1 Day

Time stopped when we met at a stranger's birthday party. I was there by chance, I was twenty-two. I had been single for only a month but didn't miss my ex. He cried when I said he had no idea what love was and left him.

H wasn't attractive, just tall and dark, but I was attracted to him. It went deeper than his appearance, despite the piercings that jutted from his eyebrows and the Alice in Chains t-shirt.

"Want a cigarette?" I asked and he nodded yes. It would always be me giving to him.

We sat on a stoop across from the party and talked. There was no pretense as his jet-colored eyes glazed over.

"You can crash with me," he offered as the lights at the party went out and people began to leave.

 "Not tonight," I said and walked down Mass Ave in the dark to my apartment.

I was the light to his dark and he had caught me alone in the shadows.

"I was jammed on Oxycontin the night that I met you," he told me a year later. "I saw you in the crowd and all I could think was 'Whoa.'"

I should learn not to date men that I meet at parties.

1 Month

You never truly know someone until you're vulnerable in front of them. I only knew the stale air of his room, choked with the stench of Backwoods blunt wraps and the shake weed he sold. Even now, I can't fully remember what we talked about those first nights together. 

He would turn on grunge music, lie down on his futon, and bury his disheveled head in the down pillows. I'd slide the switchblade he kept underneath them for protection out once he began to drift off.

"Sleep is the cousin of death," he'd murmur and pass out almost instantly.

The smell burned my eyes as I collapsed into his arms, pulling the sheets up around my face to protect them from the smoky tendrils.

"We were already in love when we were friends," he would say years later. "We just weren't having sex."

I wondered what we were even then, but I didn't realize yet that I would always have to ask that question.

3 Months

"Her husband died from liver cirrhosis," he said about his mother's second divorce one night. "She told me later that he wasn't a good father to us."

"It's like that documentary 'Bird,'" he continued. "In the best scene, Charlie Parker remains in the studio when Dizzy Gillespie, the bassist, and the drummer left the session. 'I am home,' he replies when they ask if he is leaving and rolls his sleeve up. "

"I wanted to do that last night, but then I saw your face. You will be my home," he said and his eyes looked haunted.

He would only mention heroin once and so quickly that I almost forgot.

4 Months

He flipped large quantities of dirt weed in the months before Christmas for a trip to DC to visit his mother.

"Have you ever actually seen a grand?" He'd say, caressing the hundred-dollar bills tenderly between his fingers. He obsessively counted the money each night, hiding it in his Cajon drum.

I was given a dazzling moonstone pendant. That was his way - using filth to pay for beauty. "He had good taste at least," the owner said when I sold it back to the store years later. "He saw the beauty reflected in you when he bought it."

I cried in front of him for the first time when we missed the bus in Port Authority.

"How could you read the map wrong?" He demanded in the subway.

"I made a mistake," I said, tensing up.

He stalks ahead of me as I scurry behind him. He won't look at me, speak to me, or sit next to me. I grip the cold metal rail as things shift rapidly. I have made us late and now a line to board the Greyhound bus stretches around the corridor.

I make another mistake when I put my headphones in.

"So you just go into la la land and leave me with this?" He snarls.

I turn away from his fury.

"Take your FUCKING headphones out!" He yells and I feel his white-hot anger breathing down my neck.

His shadowy features blur as he continues to scream, the passengers waiting in line watching intently. "Oh my God," an older woman with braids mouths as I drift away. H tears into the terminal, he hates when people stare at him. I snap awake when he has gone and begin to sob uncontrollably. His screams, his hate, whispers in my ear and I want to vomit.

The woman with braids approaches me and places her hand on my shoulder.

 "Don't let him treat you like that," she says with authority. "Because he will."

I nod and wipe my eyes. I knew him then, but I didn't want to yet.

1 Year 

 "I could never leave you," I'd say in happy times before we met M.

M was tall and thin like him, with long curls that draped down her leather coat. Her hip bones jutted seductively from her painted on jeans. She stood on rat city street corners a swayed side to side as she walked down the main strip. M once told me she couldn't play her violin without beta-blockers. I knew they were perfect.

We went to a bar downtown one night and I watched her lean in so close to him that their faces almost touched. She wound her curls around her fingers and watched him intently. He loved a woman who listened.

 "If I wasn't with you, I'd hit on her," he slurred to me when she walked out with someone else.

My ears burned and I pushed it away.

2 Years

S and I dive to the bottom of a large, blue bottle before we meet our boyfriends, guzzling vodka and lemon juice. I enter his apartment quietly and touch his lips to wake him. He stirs on the futon and holds my waist with one hand, the other reaching towards the lamp.

"Why do you want to turn off the lights?" I ask, my panic dangling in the air.

 "Why do you want to turn off the lights?" I repeat. "You always want them on."

"You're such an annoyance," he says. "What exactly are you getting at? Do you think I'm cheating on you? Inspect my body then."

I had already seen the bruises. Google told me they could be from drugs.

"Shut up," he says as I begin to cry.

The tone I know so well creeps in.

"Lie down and shut up or get the FUCK out of my house. How could I have been attracted to you? You're disgusting," he screams, lighting a bowl and blowing smoke at me as I continue to sob.

In these livid moments, all the empathy he has disappears. Only later, his anger is tempered with remorse and tender forehead kisses.

 "You're fucking it all up, you useless idiot," he says, glowering at me as I lie down, twitching beside him in the dark. I am alone in the empty silence between us.

At dawn, he is irritated, angry that I hadn't enjoyed myself, upset that I was still there.

"Go and get your head together," he says and hurls my clothes and make-up into the hall. "You are forcing my love to fade away."

He slams the door behind me and I am numb, slumped in the rainbow of broken eyeshadow.

2 Years 1 Month

H didn't believe me when I broke up with him.

 "I thought we would finally be happy," he said.

"I'm not happy," I said. "I have told you so many times."

He paced the street, laughed, and was unable to connect to it.

"I never broke up with you because I love you," he said. "I also didn't want you to kill yourself. I know you can't live without me."

I flicked cigarette ash on the concrete as he continued to pace.

"I promise you things will be different," he said.

But I was twenty-five then and knew he would not change for me.

"I will never love myself if I'm with you, I already stayed longer than I should have," I said.

He nodded and in that split second he understood that I am no longer his home.

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