when he tells you he’s decided it’s over, you leave the hotel, leave him sitting on the sheet with only the moonlight to hold him, walk down the smoke-filled hallways that have seen so many broken people trying to get somewhere else. anywhere else. you should’ve known this would happen, coming to a hotel. they are pit stops, things that lie between the before and after. you would happily stay stuck in the middle, forever. if he let it. if he let you. you remember that line about homesickness while passing through the lobby, something that looks like a living room that has been abandoned. like inside of your chest, inside of your heart. you are always letting people come, and take what they want. but he always gave it back in the morning, and for the first time you don’t want it anymore. you will learn to live with the gaping wound in your centre because its like a sign on the side of the road, a banner stapled to a tree in the woods, carved graffiti underneath a park bench. matt was here. he was here and he left. people leave. outside, in the parking lot, you are focused on *****, on a mission you won’t dare back down from. a man is swearing at his car, nuts and bolts scattered across the frozen blacktop. you used to lie on the blacktop at recess to keep warm, to heat up the parts of you that were cold, the parts no one could see. he asks if you know how to change a tire, and you say no, but that you are familiar with the way things fall apart.