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West

When I had to say goodbye at the airport, I thought, This is the last time

The last tiet to touch her

This is the last ti to see her face

And then, after I turned and left, That was it It’s over

I guess I went to the gate I must have boarded a plane Someone sat next to me, but I don’t remember if it was a man or a wo everything would have to get easier fro could be harder than walking away from Caroline

It alhter when it comes with the salt-copper taste of blood at the top of your throat If it’s still a smile when you have to s and s around it, unable to get rid of the bitter flavor of your mistakes

I went ho into some kind of Wild West shon I’d call h noon and we’d draw our pistols I’d fire straight and true and take him down, and then … well, that was the part I had to avoid thinking about That was the part where the screen starts to go dark, the edges drawing in around a black-bordered circle that shrinks until it’s the size of a quarter, a nickel, a pinhole, nothing

Nothing That here I would live after I drove my dad out of my life once and for all Inside that blackness where the pinhole used to be, where the light had disappeared from, I’d pitch a tent, pull a blanket around me, and endure

I was the sheriff, right? And he was the bad guy But after I took hi I wanted Maybe a gold star to pin on my shirt

I was so sure I was the fucking sheriff, it alot ho sucked in a coht it would

I did the impossible and walked away from Caroline

After that, everything in ot harder

Caroline

When West’s ringtone starts playing in my darkened bedroom, it slips into my subconscious, and I have one of those last-second-before-you-wake-up dreaainst hs against the backs ofdownand West, until the song finally h the haze of my sleep and pinch me awake

I fight my way from under the sheet, turned on and pissed off because I kno this goes The rock inwhich I’ll try and fail to shake that flood of sense-memory

I’ to lose it, every good ain, hat I want is to drop back into that dream and live there instead

It sucks It sucks, and I’ up the phone and swiping at the screen withon

West’s ringtone West is calling me

West is calling me at one am when I haven’t heard from him in two and a half months

If he’s drunk-dialing on and kick him in the nuts