I hope you make good use of the space I leave.
When my things begin to make themselves few and far in between.
When all that remains is a toothbrush, begging, merely to be used, obstructed or seen.
Each wind in its direction and waft an excited suggestion of beckoning,
Like the unrequited object of my emotion that led me to my newly found absence.
Your books will be so lonely without mine to populate the shelves and make dinner party conversations of keats, deleuze, and brönte alike.
Vonnegut excuses himself with Austen not far behind.
And lovers, thieves, and poets find their owners in me once again.
But what are stories of adoration and hope and lust if not shared with that who has your heart ?
A passionless conquest to comprehend the bounds of great literature is a fools game without one to share it with.
What lonely man can claim he knows the bounds of loves measure,
When he lets it escape him?
But then again, you opened the door to the ghosts of our still beating hearts and told the dog to no longer return for scraps.
And when he sits, patiently, for your arrival, or slightest nod to extend a greeting,
You stand at the door. To turn the porch light off.
I wonder, at times, if the dust that collects on your most prized collections of trinkets and toys, is the same dust you invite to settle on those you humbly invite into your life.
She will enter, like a bright, shiny object, and upon your evaluation, be set on a shelf for future use, perhaps, or never to be used again at all.
What good is a new toy that’s been used and placed on a shelf?
Is it for her to mount her porcelain legs to the bookshelf floor and take exit?
Or for you to await her frustrations and break her small white frame onto the wooden floors of your ego.
I often can’t help but wonder which will come first.
I realize now that, I cannot erase each small reminder of my existence because for as long as I can remember, though you often commend my memory, I was in life with you.
Continuously living.
And small pieces of me, and us, and our life began to collect on bookshelves and tv stands, and cooking pans, cubbies, and shelves and bathroom sinks.
I used to love these displays of the interwoven identity of us.
But as you request the removal of all things “me”, I see this may have been a delusion
Of the concurrent and consistent need for me to place myself in every facet of your smile , body, mind, and childhood bedroom.
For the need to be seen.
Today, at your request that I no longer be here, I will begin slowly removing each layer of my love from your life, in an attempt to recosiliate the audacity of my hoping that we would forever and always be interwoven in each other.
I’m sorry, my dearest love, for polluting all of which you care for, with the dust and ghost of who I am.
Next time, I will take notice that just because I am knocking on a door, that I will not always be worthy of having it opened.