Contracts made in the first week of a relationship are binding. Say he buys you flowers in an attempt at a grand gesture, this gift must continue, flowers ad infinitum, he's a hall of mirrors, bouquets in hands receding.

Such charmers they are, these one-meal wonders, these men of flashing plastic and perma-pressed suits. They will ask you to stay, a casual stranglehold at the back of your neck, the way their firm hands cup so gently. It is best in these instances to have an excuse pre-formed: a headache, an early-morning meeting, or perhaps someone is waiting up at home?

As for me, I will always feel the tug of some elastic cord, will hurry up a reason, my mind already leaving. A kiss at the doorway, a backwards glance that they never see as my curtains open for an instant then settle back in place, our awkward goodbyes, then me retreating, into the empty hall and up the quiet stairs.

It's always home to Henry.

He is in the upholstery, faint molecules of smoke caged within its weave, and in the eye of a graying water ring, its dark pupil, and there, along the jagged crack of a mirror he once dropped, its glassy bad luck somehow attaching itself to me like the tack of gum ground into the sole of a shoe.

I fear I'll never be rid of Henry.

Dinners scraped neatly from plates, the last drops of wine drained from the bottle, then, quick, please, on to that kiss at the door, my lips closed and neatly pursed. The evenings stretch into weeks into months into a year of different doors and different lips, but always I hurry home to Henry.

So many suitors, only one face.

At night sometimes I wake with a sudden start and reach out with stuttering hand to that place where Henry has been, and in those moments I taste the oily press of his fingers against my lips, now parted.

It's always home to Henry where he always waits for me.