By the time of camera crews and mergers and silly boys that don’t ever know what they want comes around, the moving from place to place like a boat with no anchor doesn’t get to her anymore. She was born in New York and she likes to say that the city that never sleeps had imprinted its rhythm in her soul, but after that there’s been Texas, Italy, Germany, Florida, Illinois, Philadelphia… Stamford, Connecticut; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Utica, New York? Well there’re just other cities to add to the list.

The buildings blend together and she learns not to make friends and there’s a picture of her dad in Vietnam on her mantel, next to the commendations her mom never wanted after 1991 and Desert Storm and the wooden box he came home in.

Karen wears her dad’s dog tags around her neck under her pants suits. She carries on like a soldier, one foot in front of the other, competitive, never getting attached to each broken heart because she’s learned how to replace them with minor scarring, since it’s how her father had taught her to react. He’s forever a statue profile in camouflage in her memory. Stone eyes, square shoulders, left, right, left. She doesn’t have a daddy to take care of her, to pat her head and set her on his knee, to tell her everything is alright. Her mom’s never been the comforting type.

So she’ll take care of herself, her own way. For each city and each heart beat and for each guy that fades to the lore of faded t-shirts she never gave back, she reminds herself there’ll just be another in a succession to take its place.

Left, right, left. And carry on.