What You're Left With

you're left with a balled up piece of notebook paper boasting a simple "have a great day, love!" that has been in your desk drawer since the morning you found it taped to your forehead when you awoke that Tuesday morning. it sits there nestled between the broken pencils and year-old magazines, other items that bear no purpose yet you can't stand to throw away. everyone you open your drawer to grab a pen or post-it you catch sight of it and the image of his blonde hair struggling to outshine his sheepish smile bounces around in your head before it settles in that spot behind your eyes that aches with a dull pain that no medicine can seem to get rid of.

you're left with echoes of a laugh, no, a giggle that you can do a perfect impression of. this laugh will bounce off the walls of your tiny apartment and bombard you in the middle of some lame activity like folding towels or checking your email and you'll look back and wonder when that laugh stopped, when it became forced and weak.

you'll have his shampoo in your shower which when popped open and breathed in, which you will do nearly every time you get in the shower, will take you back to the first time he wandered in with a tooth brush and said “just in case I need it while I’m here.”

you'll have that empty feeling behind you when you're lying on the couch watching football or idol or that stupid history channel show about old cars that you suffered through then and you suffer through now as you try to clutch at familiarity. you're left with that empty feeling that used to be filled with his overwhelming body that should have been uncomfortable but you never failed to fall asleep in. you're left with no knee pressed into your calf and no arm draped haphazardly over your side. no breathe on your neck and no freezing cold feet to envelope yours even though you had told him a hundred times you hated feet. you’re left with the breath stuck in your throat that should have been expelled in loud gasps as he dug his fingers in between your ribs, your ticklish spot.

you’re left with a box. a box of letters, a box of pictures, a box of chocolates you never ate because you couldn’t bear to tell him that chocolate made you sick so you just shoved it under your bed and said that you were so hungry you ate them all in one sitting but each bite made you think of him and the way his lips tasted so much better than any chocolate could ever taste.

you’re left with his grandmothers maiden name you fell in love with but can never use again.

you’re left with the red scarf you wore on your first date, and the blue shirt you wore on your second, and the green pants you wore on your eighth and the pressing at your temple that tells you he probably doesn’t even remember the color of your eyes.

and one day, you’re left with that long, redeeming sigh when you look around and realize that your house is no longer full of memories but of things. there’s a useless piece of paper in your drawer and an empty shampoo bottle in the shower, and there’s someone pushing their knee into your calf as they push the delete button on the dvr and his mother’s middle name is beautiful and he knows the color of your eyes and your heart and his laugh is loud and you can drown in it over and over and over.