K

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.

M

M was born in Bad Axe, a small town in the joint of Michigan’s thumb, near Lake Huron. She left the day she graduated high school, wore clothes she barely fit into. Parts of her were always squirting out. Married the next year. Followed him east where she spent the winter snorting cocaine off a rented coffee table. When spring broke she stole the car and drove to Nashville. That year she bought a small tourist hotel on an island off South America. She came to Detroit in the off-season. To make hard currency or have a baby. She kept a job with a hedge fund millionaire who watched her swim in his heated pool. I met her at this point in the story, her mouth all stretched and confused by other languages. I have no idea how she found the spoons of applesauce to put in her mouth. Living was an art she made that broke my nerves. She found her way into my spare room for three months. During the evenings she wrote to Brazil, long letters explaining snow.

V

V was a six foot two red head, born a twin. I knew her when she wandered. She had a high soft voice, like whispering above an airplane engine. She wore caramel lips and a clever smile. At times, she took so long to say hello you were left tilting with your mouth open, falling in to her neck, soft as ferns. She was always crashing relationships into shore, after which she’d pack a bag for elsewhere. Her landlord was a round woman from Naples. When V left with her single suitcase she’d ask,
“When will you return?”
“Who knows, there’s so much to see.”
“Yes my vagabonda.” 

The last time I saw V was without notice or surprise, at a bar in Brooklyn. She’d boarded a bus in Cleveland where she’d taken up work as a grade school teacher. She had a few dollars and wore boots that came to her knees. She asked me where there was dancing. After a drink we walked out into February’s night where she evaporated into the ice.