Footnotes on a life ill-lived #13.

¹ This reminded her, just for a moment, of a man she had loved in her youth. He told her five stories of who his parents were before disappearing with her television and a sizeable chunk of the finite amount of romantic love she had to give in her life. It left her shattered. Now she only thought of him at times like this, when distracted: when he could edge his sly way back into her memory, as beautiful and mean as ever.