How does it feel?

Oh, my birthday. Carl would always call me when we were little, and then, suddenly, he didn't. He was there with me the year before, in our summer house, we took a long walk in the middle of the night and it was getting colder. We found another house, abandoned and sad in the middle of a meadow. "Come with me inside and I'll let you kiss me", I said, and I wish I hadn't.

We lost six years together, six birthdays with a silent telephone and the memories. He would call me flower and ask me how my day was. After the Gauloise haze, everything else went back to normal but he just called me by my name, and I called him Carl. Someone burned down that abandoned house the following winter.

When I woke up this Monday morning Chloe had left a present on my bed, an adorable little Juicy Couture necklace. Later I got a phone call, it was Carl. "Happy birthday my flower", he said.