I hope you had a good time in Vegas. The connection wasn't good. Your voice coming through like fist fulls of hair. Intermittently painful. I only wanted to wish you a happy birthday. And when we hung up the line, I didn't wonder when you'd call back for me. Broken lines and promises. I'm not sad anymore when you neglect to ask me who I am. I'm pretty sure, these days, I hardly even know for sure. I used to know that I was one girl who didn't need you. Didn't need anything from anyone. At least there was that. To rely on. Like the weight of pennies on the tongue or the smell of rain at home. That isn't enough. Anymore. There is only just this residual sadness. Like the time you forgot to pick me up from school. Or the way the car doors rattled the same way every time we rode in the car after the time you told me the dog died. All those years I never believed you were real. The way sadness sticks into me as if all of my broken promises and yours were glass. Nothing came back. And I still stand under the porch lamp, nights, waiting for the engine's sound of a car you haven't owned since I was eight. In a memory that probably never existed, if I pushed it hard enough. Can't you see, Poppy, how it all falls apart? How every moment I try to draw you into collapses. And I'm left clutching my chest wondering when it will get easier to breathe. When I won't be so afraid that my eyes are your eyes and my hands get itchy at night, too.