It’s like a death, but it’s worse. Because this is the last time I’ll speak with you and we’re both angry.

I’m yelling something, but I’m looking at the rumple between your mouth and your nose, watching it as you press together your lips. The words continue, but my voice has long since drowned away. I’m just watching your lips, thinking about the time we made root beer as children. We put the bottles in your basement and we forgot them. They exploded.

But surely that explains nothing: the rumple, and your eyes that have the roundness of coins, and why I’m yelling, and why I know—with the stale certainty of ballast—that I’ll never see you again.