I can't turn back to so heavy a page with imperfect fingertips.

        I’m still deciding whether you should be a part of my novel and my closet or just my novel.

         I used to think throwing away the physical proof that something once existed was like throwing away memories. Our bodies become untouched with time. Our minds filter in and out information and we forget. I pick up objects and remember the way I felt in that moment. I still remember things I don’t want to. I still recall memories I had thought were long forgotten. I used to think that I would be nothing without my memories until I felt the urge to forget. 

          So, I said let go. The more a person tries to forget the harder it becomes. I said let go that night in the moving van after keys were left on table tops belonging to mothers that knew the end result. I said let go when I threw out the box of papers with familiar handwriting like I didn’t want to recognize the fact that my fingertips once crossed and looped lines to form something that would cease to exist someday. I said let go when I found cloth and metals at the top of my closet hidden way back behind my new life. I said let go when I smiled once in a familiar place by accident. My eyes widened at the thoughts zooming up from under my new ones.

           Instead I kept everything I thought was worth keeping, but honestly I was wrong about how memories exist. Yours are still at the back of my closet and I think about burning them from time to time. I think about the bubbles that would form on your skin and burst pain back into you, but that is all just a morbid fantasy of mine. I would probably just burn myself and cause scars on my fingertips for thinking I was ready to let go.

            Now, I hold onto these physical things for a different reason and some days it pains me. I feel the numbness of my fingertips as I stare at my closet or on those days I reach for my iron back there. Sometimes it is so hot back there I wonder if I left it plugged in and I flinch. I remind myself that some day it will cool. Maybe that day I will donate those physical things to the collection of lost memories I used to like to remember or maybe I will break my tradition. I might stop hoarding the physical components of memories that I do not need to keep. Then, maybe everyone’s story will truly be condensed into the words I give myself and nothing more. Each memory will be a chapter instead of a box and I prefer reading.