You were kissing me when I fell down the stairs. All I got was a bruise; you were the one with the broken finger from diving after me.
***
The old man picks up my film camera. He says kids these days. He says you don’t know real photography. In my day. When he puts down the camera, the back is open and the whole roll is the translucent brown of empty beer bottles. You say, It’s only photos.
***
I find the milk you bought in the cupboard. I say, Doesn’t that stuff go in the fridge?
***
It’s our wedding and your three-year-old niece makes off with the champagne and sprays the flowers.
***
I’m at an interview for a job in French. It is going well, so I decide to start responding in Spanish to impress them. When I ask why I didn’t get the job, they say I don’t seem to have a particularly good grasp of the French language.
***
White. White white white white white. Ovulation, or thoughts of you? Children play in the shadows of my mind. Expensive underwear.
***
I’m on a mission to recover a lost item that, in the wrong hands, would lead to global catastrophe. The wrong hands arrive. We battle in my old high school. I lock the thing in my locker and get a ride home with friends I run into in the parking lot. We dance in our seats in the MacDonald’s drive-through.
***
You get a set of stickers for your niece. They’re garage signs. You pick ‘Lucky’s Place.’ I try to choose ‘Lover of Roofs’ but you insist I have ‘Tire Tyrant.’
***
You take a job testing doorbells for the mayor in a long hallway. You find a way to cheat the system. It’s a very risky move.
***
It’s our wedding and you’re greeting guests like a royal garden party. I’m wearing something the colour of butter. Every movement of the fabric makes a sound like a nylon tracksuit and I can’t get my shoes off. I look for your niece everywhere. There’s no champagne. No flowers.
***
The host of the party says, Well we clearly didn’t order enough pizzas. Except nobody has touched the veggie one. The crowd laughs. Your stare is accusing.
***
You are holding my hand so tightly I can feel our pulses clashing.
***
I beg to babysit the neighbours’ kids. They sit back and watch as I feed their children hummus and speak of growing food, meditation, recycling. Wiping dribble from the baby’s chin, I feel like a burglar.
***
Cops are patrolling Water Street, arresting anyone smoking weed. Our friends scatter. I stand still with my cigarette, a distraction. When they pass I find folks crouched in the first alley. I don’t find you.
***
I am in a hurry across the parkway, but at every light, I get set in the margins or sidewalks like a glitch in a Mario Kart game.
***
You say you want diamonds on your engagement ring. I say I already gave you one, you just wear it on a different finger. You’ve already stopped listening.
***
A rat in the restaurant. We all pretend we don’t see it so as not to invite chaos into the nice time we’re having. A stray dog wanders in and eats it on the rug.
***
Blood. Blood blood blood blood blood. Rubbery mass that dreamed of being a home. Expensive underwear.
***
I point out the big field behind your parents’ house for the wedding. You look alarmed. Turns out in this one I haven’t proposed.
***
Post-apocalyptic world where we must hide from each other to survive. But we’ve been hiking on the barrens and there’s nothing to hide behind.
***
It’s after the big fight and your brother introduces me at the restaurant as his sister-in-law. Your mother is knitting scouring pads at a bar stool. She pours liquor in my coffee and tells me you’ll be back.
***
Save your life. Drive the stick shift. This I can do. Only in this moment, I can’t.
***
I write you a letter, drunk. Mail it before I sober up. In the morning you’re at my door saying Thank god, this changes everything. You hold me. The trouble is, I can’t remember what the thing said.
***
A home video skipping like an old VHS. Baby, don’t get too close to the edge. Baby I’m serious, get back from there. My body, blurred by golden light reflecting off the sea below me, rolls up into the top of the television. Reappears at the bottom. This is amazing! Are you seeing these cliffs? Amazing! Skip. Repeat.
***
While skipping town, my getaway car gets towed. A child actor shows up in a hardhat and tells me he has organized the whole city project. The project is a conveyor belt that carries illegally parked cars up a mountain to an incinerator. His mom makes us a pistachio pie.
***
Alternatively we’re on the run for a while, camping along the old railbed. When we return, our home has been gutted. I guess we hadn’t realized how long we’d be gone.
***
You ask to see me. I take you to a secret beach I found as a kid. It’s covered in garbage.
***
Your mother has baked me a cake. There are elaborate icing letters that say nice things like ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Everything will be ok.’ Your mother is gathering grass and twigs from the yard to make me dinner. Your mother is teaching me how to make pickles.
***
We live in a series of tiny apartments. In each one I find some secret passage or hidden door that leads to extra rooms. In each of these tiny apartments with extra space we find a way to get along like we never could in our own tiny apartment with no extra rooms.
***
It’s our wedding our wedding our wedding our wedding.
***
In this one you take me back. In this one you don’t. In this one you never left. In this one I never did. When I wake there’s sun in my eyes and the sound of someone brewing coffee. It doesn’t take long to remember that our window faces west. And we don’t own a percolator. I peel myself from the leather couch and walk back to the apartment I know will be empty when I arrive.