Pieces of Us

Photo Credit: jonathangewirtz.com

Green stone and bleached sea shells, this is all I have left of us. I wear this memory around my throat. It chokes me with loss, heavy and biting. The jagged edges of the bright shells carve your name into my flesh.

We walked into this shop, the outside a cracked facade of weathered wood, hiding behind dry sea grass. Sand soughed against my toes, brine and ocean winds brushing my cheeks. Sunlight sparkled through the cerulean glass sitting in the window. I didn’t have money so you bought me the tiny wineglass with a dolphin etched into its side. Ten years later, I picked up the blue shattered pieces and watched them die on the white tiles of a house I never thought I’d live in, in a parallel universe where I’m here instead of there.

A shelf mixed with tired paperbacks and old photo albums–there it rests, precariously, as if hanging from a ledge. Maybe it is. I only pick up the pictures every now and then, but I stare at the red and blue flowers covering the images of your face inside. It’s an unassuming album– no one would know that my entire existence hides amongst the old snapshots of you and me and your guitar and my smile.

These are our pieces, the ones that are as tangible as your absence, the ones that won’t let me forget. Maybe I should bury them, have a funeral for the love that we lost with the receding waves made from ocean and time. Instead, I wear that necklace and feel your memory encircle me. I picture that blue glass and remember your hands. I look at your photo and grow stronger in knowing that distance is only miles and moments and illusions we build to deceive our hearts. I know that walls come down and people cross countries, and I am comforted by the objects and memories and love that you gave me, that we created together. I keep these parts of you like you keep my letters, the only pieces that ever mattered.

In response to the Weekly Writing Challenge–Object.