I think of you thinking of me. I listen to girls outside on my street corner, laughing empty into the night. Each sound they make bounces off of the concrete and gets tangled in my ears. I don’t owe you anything, I remind myself. In my head, on repeat, there’s a line of poetry that goes: “what better way to hold your hair, what better way?” And then I’m thinking of all of the better ways. Then I am thinking of what better way to have held your hands or your hair or your voice or your sorrow or your moods or your attention or your bedroom door or your laughter. I don’t want to keep wondering, do you understand? It’s useless. There was no better way. There was only one way and when that way wasn’t enough then there was no way. The way destroyed itself simply by being. It destroyed itself in a way that I can’t, in a way that I refuse to. There was no better way because I am only one way– this way. And I don’t owe you anything for it, I constantly have to tell myself. Anything.