you don't smoke anymore

and I never carry a pack, so we pass the cigarette I bummed off that college kid from the bar back and forth. The hour has faded past midnight blues into the orange promise of a new day.

We're four, no five, years down the road from where we started; those wild kids we were, soaking our sadness in cheap whiskey, the late nights we called living, in a bar we called ours. We never knew how to talk to each other, really talk to each other, instead of just at one another. Both of us performing the roles we thought the other wanted, never actually nailing the part.

Here, now, you have the words: that you were drawn to me, and terrified of me, in equal measure. Your brain loved to play both sides while I suffered not so silently. I lost my mind trying to read yours. You were always going to leave and see the world without me in.

Now you're back as suddenly as you left.

I'm outside, silently congratulating myself for keeping my hands where they belong. I can picture every inch of the tight black dress I wore that night, mesh detail; harness with the light leather straps; doc martens with a thick rubber sole; red hair curling perfectly even in the final throes of summer's breath. I dressed for one thing, acted on another. Self-control, I think. I've finally got it. I exhale, and by the time all the air has left my lungs, you're there.

You followed me. Didn't count on that.

Later, I learned that you lasted all of 30 seconds before you took off for the door, ignoring a chorus of NO, NO, NO from our friend.

Self-control, I think, as I lay next to you in bed. You press against my back and hug me tight. I roll over and straight into your kiss. I lasted all of 30 seconds.

What good is there in remembering the middle? I know the beginning, and I know the end. Adoration and anger and affection live in the in-between, in the memories I'm not yet ready to excavate.

I know what you want. You'll make a great dad someday.

I could tell you about the long nights spent just talking. The mornings you woke me up far too early to lay on the couch in content silence. You always made me coffee. The stupid jokes, the delicious dinners. The parties, the planes, the fights, the fucking. You holding my hair back while I'm bent over a trashcan in that Berlin club. Me holding you tight when you cried for reasons I don't think even you understood. Weeks straight spent together in solitude. Laughing at each other for all the right reasons. The creeping, warm feeling that something here is working.

Until, of course, it isn't.

I know what I don't want. I'll never give you kids.

I remember how it feels to run my fingers through your hair when it's gotten a little too long, tug the curls slightly before you push them right back. These little affections my body still holds for you like muscle memory. I have so much love for you and nowhere to put it.

Somewhere after 5AM in the park, we've found the wide circle of an old tree trunk to share. It's been an all-nighter, the kind spent stumbling through door after door of bizarre new party with a roving group of Brooklyn maniacs. At the last stop, I tugged your arm and asked to go. If we leave now, we can watch the sun rise in the park. The world falls away when it's just the two of us anyway.

Knees folded, back pressed to yours, we share my last cigarette. The Talk will come later, along with the tears and the anger, the sorrow that will stretch into not talking with purpose. It will be an empty silence, a wordless pain expressed only in the language of loss.

In an hour you will carry me, my legs around your waist, your lips pressed to mine, to your bed for the last time.

I can't picture us standing next to each other in the present. Can't see us talking or laughing together anymore in the future.

You are gone, as suddenly as you arrived.