I’ve been unpacking all day. Boxes and boxes of stuff that I let pile up in corners for the past several months. Some of them I recognize, most of them I don’t. The ones that I don’t recognize I’ve been placing off to the side.
This one here I’m pretty sure is yours. It’s a wooden box lined with seashells that you used to keep next to the bed. I remember it only because it was where the condoms were kept. It’s empty now. I wonder what you replaced it with.
I’ve been drinking today, too. Not like how we used to drink in the bad old days, but enough to remind me of them. I keep thinking back to that time when we sat on the couch and drew a line down a sheet of paper and wrote, on one side, all the reasons we should stay together. On the other side, all the reasons we shouldn’t.
I don’t remember any of them now. Mostly I remember watching the side of your face as you wrote. And that we were listening to Bob Dylan, whom I never cared for all that much but was on all the time anyway.
I wonder if that letter is here. Somewhere in all these boxes. If it is, I’ll get to it eventually.
In the meantime though, I’m going to sit on my stoop and finish this glass of wine and try not to think of anything. And with any luck I’ll wake up tomorrow having forgotten all about the letter because, unlike you, I was never built for this kind of remembering.
Until then though.
Love,
[redacted]
P.S. I’ll hang on to the box for a bit if you don’t mind.
Into the quiet.
Dear [redacted],
I’ve been unpacking all day. Boxes and boxes of stuff that I let pile up in corners for the past several months. Some of them I recognize, most of them I don’t. The ones that I don’t recognize I’ve been placing off to the side.
This one here I’m pretty sure is yours. It’s a wooden box lined with seashells that you used to keep next to the bed. I remember it only because it was where the condoms were kept. It’s empty now. I wonder what you replaced it with.
I’ve been drinking today, too. Not like how we used to drink in the bad old days, but enough to remind me of them. I keep thinking back to that time when we sat on the couch and drew a line down a sheet of paper and wrote, on one side, all the reasons we should stay together. On the other side, all the reasons we shouldn’t.
I don’t remember any of them now. Mostly I remember watching the side of your face as you wrote. And that we were listening to Bob Dylan, whom I never cared for all that much but was on all the time anyway.
I wonder if that letter is here. Somewhere in all these boxes. If it is, I’ll get to it eventually.
In the meantime though, I’m going to sit on my stoop and finish this glass of wine and try not to think of anything. And with any luck I’ll wake up tomorrow having forgotten all about the letter because, unlike you, I was never built for this kind of remembering.
Until then though.
Love,
[redacted]
P.S. I’ll hang on to the box for a bit if you don’t mind.