K was the worst kind of girlfriend. The kind that did drugs
in bathrooms. The kind that joked about all the guys who
hit on her. The kind that never had any girlfriends. The kind that came home
late without apology, smelling wrong. We fell in love quickly, I pulled to the shoulder
of the freeway for our first kiss and we slept that night on my new floor, under our breath’s blanket. Our romance stretched thin when she moved to take a false
degree and a series of cooking jobs in New York. She got so broke. I
stayed in her squatter’s flat where no one was ever home at dinnertime. Her
room was walled in empty stainless steel restaurant shelves. She had one
contact lens. She put it in her good eye, the other missed everything, the city
invisible grey, spoiling around her. Late that winter I left her in an ice storm, windows spider
frozen.