Congratulations on Falling From Her Fire Escape!

It’s tough to say goodbye to someone you loved. And it can be even tougher to say goodbye to them when they refuse to speak to you or respond to your text messages.

Which is why you’re going to find yourself on your ex-girlfriend’s fire escape late, late tonight, climbing up, wincing at each moan of the metal beneath your feet. You’ll be a floor and a half beneath her window when her roommate will poke her head out and look down at you.

“She doesn’t wanna talk to you!” she’ll slur down at you. She’ll have been drinking. The half-empty bottle of Jack in her fist will be evidence enough of that.

“I’d like to hear that from her!” you’ll shout back up. Her roommate will drag her head back in the window for a moment, and you’ll hear speech from within the apartment. It won’t quite be shouting, but it’ll be close, and when her roommate reappears in the window it’ll be clear that the outcome wasn’t in your favor.

“She dasn’t wanna!” she’ll scream down at you.

This will give you a moment’s pause. You’ll have climbed up like four stories at this point, and you’ll have jumped up to get her fire escape down in the first place, which was really really hard. You won’t want to turn back empty handed, but if your ex doesn’t want to talk to you there really isn’t a lot you can do about it.

But nobody ever accomplished anything by quitting. So you’ll grit your teeth, step up on the next rung on the ladder and shout up at her roommate.

“Fuck you!”

You’ll scramble up as fast as you can, trading sure footing for speed. Her roommate will duck back inside for a moment while you rush up, and when she reappears she’ll have the whiskey bottle, now empty, clutched in her hand.

“No!” she’ll shout before throwing the bottle at your head.

She won’t hit you, but she will make you shift your weight to dodge her. And as you shit your weight you’ll feel the fire escape twist beneath you and give way a little. Not all the way, but just enough that you’ll go tumbling off of it.

You’ll plummet down, your shoulder catching out of the guard rails, sending you spinning into the dumpster beneath your girlfriend’s apartment. You’ll land with a crunch on a combination of cardboard, scrap wood and paper products. Coughing and crying a little you’ll hear muffled cursing from the apartment above.

As you lay in that dumpster you’ll think long and hard about whether or not you should try moving, about your relationship to your ex and about just why you thought it was a good choice to try climbing up an ex’s fire escape to talk to her when she clearly wasn’t interested in speaking to you anymore. The ambulance will arrive ten minutes after the fall, long before you manage to figure anything out.

Congratulations on Falling From Her Fire Escape!