Reason no. 1 to stay: we have previously asserted to each other to have been in mutual love. Reason no. 2: I am still in love with her. No. 3: in the morning the pigeons beat their wings upon the kitchen’s windows’ sashes and make the most awful laughter. No. 4: the kitchen’s windows face east. No. 5: when the snow falls it spoons itself to their exterior sills, inexact ripples, softening shapes. No. 6: autumn. No. 7: the names we have given Day Street’s Saturday-morning joggers. 7a: Mothman. 7b: No Face. 7c: Socrates. No. 8: the elms in autumn. No. 9: the Delaware in autumn. No. 10: proximity. No. 11: gentrification. No. 12: the accompanying complications of separation. No. 13: a moment at the beginning in which she drew upon a fogged train window a tiny turtle and I added upon its head a tinier hat. No. 14: my inability to describe to her in full my desire to connect, to bring into stereoscopic focus our future loss. No. 15: the dogs of Penn Treaty Park. 15a: Alex. 15b: Chris. 15c: Shawn. No. 16: her arms around my stomach, her chin on my shoulder, night, Day Street’s street lamps shaping water droplets into ghosts, the comforting nothing of passing cars. No. 17: the asynchronicity of our sounds and our silences. No. 18: the last of the banana-bread muffins we baked together for our future breakfasts thawing upon an enamel sunflower. No. 19: she was gone in the morning, but the things that were hers remained.

Colin Lubner writes (in English) and teaches (math) in southern New Jersey. His work has either appeared or will appear, temporally speaking. Recent pieces can be found through his Twitter: @no1canimagine0. He is keeping on keeping on.