Photographic

I.
I stepped on something last night, fighting through blackness and sleep on my way to the bathroom. It was small and hard and it hurt. The next morning I found my cat batting about the earbuds you gave me all those years ago.

II.
On my dresser is a soft, white bear. It's the only physical memento of the only relationship I told anyone about. It's the also the only thing he ever did for me that showed he knew he was in a relationship. Just as I didn't know how to get rid of him, I don't know how to get rid of the bear.

III.
My life is packed full of mementos from you, though. Once we'd turned to monks in each other's presence you spoke through the physical world. You criticized me through overboiled eggs and mocked me through the laughing camera eye. You whisper through my favorite pair of jeans - I can hear your veiled whisper inside the denim, slinging cruder words than any from your mouth.

IV.
I have left you nothing. I hadn't planned it that way. Until the cloud of fruit flies descended, I had no strength to make plans at all. I am glad that I've left you nothing because I am done calling on you. A quest to fetch what belongs to me would leave me with another thousand angry welts.

V.
Our ship was already sinking when you told me you've learned to not let anyone know you. You didn't blame me, but I knew it was my fault. I have stopped loving you. I have stopped missing you. But you have given me warehouses and whorehouses of possessions - I cannot stop knowing you, no matter how unimportant and irrelevant that knowledge is. You are wrapped up in twine and tinsel in all of your abandoned spare parts.