But I thought of you every day. This was true.

I felt the vulgarity of his decline conquer my body, satellite from his own, and with little cognizance of the level to which his decay had spread. I would retreat, in an effort to save that which sustained me. I had lived in Buffalo one year. Naive and nearly twenty, I grasped at my existing relationship with hopeless hands. A hasty move into an 80th street townhouse from our humble single floor, two bedroom on Caravelle Drive would serve as an oasis.

It was August. I was nineteen. You were twenty.

I fled the technology which connected us. This time I promised myself that I would put in a real effort toward making my relationship work. He may have loved me blindly, or maybe he just didn't care; either way, his money was our means and he showed no reservation in buying a fix.

We agreed that I would stop working, attend college full time and spend my free moments assuming my gender-role in the way of caring for kittens, a vegetable garden and any other extraneous tasks assigned to the "housewife."

I wanted to give myself more to lose.
I wanted to believe that I had made the right choices.
But I was nineteen,
and my fortune told of bigger, better mistakes.