July 2, 2010 by nantokanantoka
With every crease and fold, another goodbye is said.
Trite song lyrics float through her mind as she folds another shirt from a concert they went to together. It is still intoxicatingly imbued with his scent, the threads clinging on to him far after she has let go.
The box in her hands is heavy as she trudges down the stairs from her loft, her knees nearly giving out halfway down the flight. Setting the box on the landing, a photo flutters down to rest on the shiny polished mahogany.
They look up at her, strangers to her even though one of them has the same face as she does. A dull thud pounds in her chest, but it’s not the feeling of missing a person, it’s the hollowness that comes from losing what was never there.
Gingerly picking it up between two fingers, she sets it back in the box with the rest of the remnants of what is left.
The march to the curb feels like months go by, not unlike the six or seven years that passed by so quickly before her eyes. Resisting the urge to run back inside and clutch the box to her chest, she sets it gently on the side of the street, to be picked up by the truck the next day.
The empty pain in her chest persists.
But it will fade as the photos will crumble and shirts will disintegrate, lost to time and the fickle nature of human memory.