2004
Phantoms
The apartment is almost completely packed up now. I have a tower of orange and black plastic tubs stacked from floor to ceiling in the corner of the bedroom (orange and black because I got them on clearance after Halloween.) My life has been reduced to that tower of boxes and the muddle of furniture that sits awaiting the moving van and the official leaving day. Everything is secure, tidy, matching.
Except for one thing.
On the table in the center of the dining room is a clear bin with a green lid and red handles. It’s sizeable, but full to the top. I can’t bear to look at it, but I can’t bear to put it out of sight. That box is her to me. That box is everything I have left in this world of her.
The complete outfit she wore the day we met lines the bottom after she left it behind in haste. A small box of love letters from the Middle East, letters written to keep us bound together even in a zone of death. My engagement ring. The silver ring she gave me the morning after we first made love. Her photographs, the roses she sent me, the teddy bear, a note here and there. Coffee cups given to me for when I travelled. Words of hope, of promise.
My friends who have been helping me with the move tried to make me throw it all into the trash, but I couldn’t do that. My therapist tried to get me to mail it all to her, but I couldn’t do that either. No one seems to understand how much I loved her and how much I still do. She wasn’t my first lesbian experience, not by a long shot, but to me, she was my first everything. How can one throw that away? Certainly I still hurt and I do understand it is over, but the memories are so much more than just of her; they are of me as well.
In my heart I know things have not resolved themselves; we’ll either end up together again or end up hating each other forever. In my head, I know she’s gone. That box on the table…that box is less about her and far more about me than I’ll ever understand.
by Nickie
