I'm the crack in the window that reminds you not to play too hard indoors, watching you in your bed and keeping count of the notches you won't recall.

She's sitting at the counter and she's dragging out the last of her twelfth cigarette that evening. He approaches, trying not to even consider how many she's had through out the extent of the day. He sits down and extends a hand, asking what she's doing in such a crummy place. She says she's trying to get lost and thinks that she wishes he would do the same. He cocks his head to the side and glances at her shaking hands, smirking at her coffee as she gets her fourth refill and suggesting that perhaps there's better ways of relaxing. She rolls her eyes, says she knows his game. Now he's interested, and he asks what it is. She says he's nothing but a skipping heart or bitterandbroken, and watches as his shoulders sag when she continues on to state that she's not in the business of butterflies any longer, and has zero method of making him feel better than he did when he woke up that morning to the cold pillow next to him. He warns her about assumptions and she warns him about talking to strangers. He says he always was a rebel and she said it's a pity, because his eyes were an awful lovely shade of blue when he finally looked a little scared. Fears for the weak, he mocks her statement out of resentment at her wit. Rolling her eyes yet again, she says that it's time to roll out and that she hopes his evening goes well. He asks what she'll do for the rest of it, and she begins to unwrap a brand new pack of cigarettes, shrugging her shoulders despite knowing the answer. Her night will be spent sitting within her window seal, and she will watch geometrical flights of birds pass her by as she continues to chug back the coffee, wondering whether a heart attack or cancer will reach her first, and wondering when, and wondering what happened to the little girl that used to claim she'd fly home every winter because spring would be spent exploring. She'd lost her appetite for exploring right around the time that she'd lost her appetite for regular diets, but she didn't lose hope and certainty that the world was still as beautiful as the catalogs tucked beneath her bed.