Malibu Memories
How do I tell you that I kept pieces of you in the corners of my existence?
Your handkerchief in the right corner of my bottom drawer — washed but the bloodstain stayed like memories of you that refused to leave, no matter how many times I scrubbed them till my skin gave up. Your broken glasses that I failed to fix found a nest on the corner of my nightstand. You told me to keep them as you put them in my hand, your own hands not letting go of mine for a long time and you said, “To make sure the glasses don’t fall.” Something else fell that night, and it fell deeper the longer you held my hands, the tighter.
Your shirt on the corner of my wardrobe had no traces of your scent anymore, and memories of you wearing it had faded. I could almost no longer remember your form in this Malibu shirt, because I had worn it so many times you almost morphed into me in my memories. Your form disappeared but your warmth lingered. Even though I no longer remember the curves of your body on my hand, I still remember the warmth of your hug every time I put the shirt on. And every time I did, it would be like you never left.
“You’re so simple.” You said a week before your departure. Simple. Because I didn’t beg you to stay. Or throw a fit at the thought of you leaving me — or the idea of us. Simple. Because I had understood your dreams. I had wondered did you think of it as simple, or perhaps you thought I didn’t care? Simple. If only you could see the jumbled-up thoughts in my head, each like a static trying to find a stable signal to show the world just how much I had to say. Simple.
I was simple — a four-cornered square with straight-cut lines shaping my world. And on the last corner I kept a wilted flower in my book, marking a page wherein a dot that you made stayed. An ink blot following a scribble of what would be a promise — that you’d come back. Perhaps our memories were my fantasies, and perhaps a promise would be just that: a promise, a stack of words not knowing when nor how to morph into reality. But that ink blot would never disappear. And perhaps you were an ink blot in my book, when you wrote a chapter to describe my existence.
Simple.
