Danielle St. Pierre

That night at the bar, I was doing this thing where I pick the residual mascara – last night’s mascara – off my eyelashes as I thought back to everything that’s happened these past few months.

Ari and I walked into a bar with a powder-white alter.

“I have almost five months clean you know, and I’m doing the right thing now,” he says to no one, shuffling past a row of Christmas trees for sale, the butt of a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Everyone walking around New York City is a ticking time bomb. A tightly wound, sleep-deprived, fiercely alive ticking time bomb, and they’ll claw your damn eyes out.