This happened today. It’s still sort of happening. The way it happens when you cram a bunch of paper in the trash, where they uncurl and pick at the sides of the garbage bag for a while. Like they’re trying to escape. Tell you it’s not too late.
Sorry. You can’t tell from the picture. These aren’t your notes. Notes you wrote or notes someone wrote for you.
This is a pile of notes from a woman I dated. For a long time. A woman I’ve been broken up with. For a long time.
They’re good notes. And letters. Mostly good.
That’s why I kept them so long. Or that’s what I say anyway. Why I moved them to a new apartment. Why they sit in their own bag apart from everything else. Just the things she wrote me and the things I kept from the places we went together, all separated out and by themselves.
I know those feelings are dead. The things she said in there. They’re just things that happened before and they’re gone now. They’re words that tell a story that started and ended and now it’s just a story.
I’m throwing these out. Not because I don’t need them anymore. I do. I really do.
These letters, they’re the most of the nice things anyone said to me. Things I don’t remember until I page through. Then I find a page and it’s not remembering anymore. It’s happening. It’s still here a little bit. The story that’s a story and not just a story.
They have to go.
Even if they’re the most of the nice things anyone has said to me. Even if they’ll always be the most. If that’s all I get. Even then.
She gave them to me, but they’re not mine anymore.
They helped. Looking through, the things she said. They made me remember a person who loved me. That’s a big word, that Loved word. It’s the right one here. All the ways that people mean it, they’re all in that pile of papers sliding over each other in the trash.
They’re not mine anymore, though. Or hers. They don’t belong to anyone anymore. The story is still mine. The letters aren’t.
So they go.