My heart beats. Like wind rattling the branches against my window. I count the rhythmic ticking of my clock. I wait. Every single night before I close my eyes, I wait. Until he calls and my heart starts to flutter as it squeezes into my throat and I’m at a loss for words, but I have to answer the phone because it’s the only time he can call since it costs him a dollar every time he wants to talk to me. Then there’s her. The one that calls him baby and can see him whenever she likes. The one who conned him into crushing my heart of glass into a million tiny shards that rip me to pieces every time I hear his name. The one who took him from me. But now she has no power over him. He comes and goes as he pleases, doing whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. He is coming back to me, relinquishing her grasp on him and freeing himself of the guilt she imposed on him, the lies she wove into his mind, the bars she put on his heart. His heart calls out to me as my heart calls to him. It is love and it is unbreakable.