I. Recording the beginning of a relationship is easy: the first date, the first kiss, the first fumbling blowjob in the Jeep on the roof of that parking garage with Roxette playing softly on the radio. The first I love you, a not unfamiliar phrase, but come our first anniversary we have to count backwards simply to settle on the date. Only the truly precious couples mark the first argument, and the next memorable argument is the last argument we’ll ever have. The argument that ends all arguments, after which we, should we ever argue again, will be nothing more than two people who fucked for a while, perhaps lived together for a time, arguing. But not yet.

II. I steal lemons and you make lemonade. It isn’t this many lemons, or this much juice, to which this much water is added, and this much sugar to that. As many lemons as I bring home, and as much juice as they contain. Stolen from around the corner where the yellow trumpet flowers grow, and that man burned his hand shooting fireworks on the Fourth. Or else from the driveway halfway down the block while teetering on a jungle-green garbage bin. Warm water from the sink until the color is just right, and sugar until the mixture tastes sweet enough..

III. The woman on the cableway asked if we were brothers. Friends my grandmother tried her best to explain. Visiting from America. (Before my first trip to Cleveland you liked to joke that you had traveled three times across the globe for me while I hadn’t crossed the country for you even once.) It was the woman and her young grandson, and the three of us—you, my grandmother, and myself—on a painful ascent up the side of that mountain. We don’t make it ugly is what my grandmother said on that very first trip, meaning that we never touch, or kiss, or cling in public. I did not tell her that we had learned not to, and so endure the awkward silences instead.