We got day drunk together in the sun and I lied. You were telling me a story about how you made a mistake, and now a girl was pregnant, and I wasn’t quite drunk enough to tell you that I could see your receding hairline peeking out so all in all this sounded like a net positive.

You weren’t really keen on talking about fatherhood, so I let you talk about something else.

Jug wine is the best wine because it’s cheap and you aren’t surprised by the headache that smashes in later. Jug wine never pretends to be something it isn’t, and if you’re drinking it, you’re probably past the pretense too. Jug wine is the definition of punk rock.

You stretched out on the warm concrete, your shirt riding up in a way I always appreciated. We were unemployed night creatures basking in the sun, and you kept talking about yourself, which was very like you. You were Peter Pan, baring your stomach on the sidewalk. But I sure as hell wasn’t Wendy anymore.

I still smoked Turkish Royals then, and I sounded like it too. I had gravel in my lungs that would’ve made Tom Waits proud (if compromised lungs are a sort of boy scout badge). But I was proud because I was young and I wasn’t just any girl any more I was the girl you still wanted and you could never ever have again, and not because you were going to be a father now, but because I was going to burn that painting you gave me, and the zine with all those cringe art school gothic polaroids we made, and scrub the paint from my skin, and pluck the glass from my gums, and finally leave the city behind—and because you were just another butt in the fucking ashtray.

The sun was warm, and beautiful, and bright and everything was perfect the way it always is when you know beyond a doubt that you are never, ever, ever, ever coming back. I let you lie to me, and I lied to you. I fed you romantic toxic shit poetry that I never believed, but you sucked it from my fingers like it was fairy dust.