Affection

The heavens grieve as I hold a funeral for my affection and invite only resignation. He lays a single white rose before the tombstone upon which I've carved affection's favorite words: 一见钟情 一眼万年

We clear out affection's room - we blow out her scented candles and take down her fairy lights and release the polaroids hung upon its strings.

Under her bed, I find a sealed box. I pry it open and it's all the letters she wrote to you but could never send. It's all the papers on which she had scribbled all the things she had wanted to ask you but had never managed to.

On a shelf, I notice a book she had bought. It stands out - pastel pink among the grays and blacks of mystery and classics.

I remember she didn't really like it, but you did, and that's why she kept it.

Some papers are hastily stacked in a corner of her desk. "Stargazing on Boulevards". It's the manuscript she had been working on.

I flip through it.

Each page is lined with heartache in carefully chosen words that form implicit paragraphs. I think she would not want you to read her unpolished heart, yet I cannot bring myself to dispose of it, so I leave it in the box that now holds all her unspoken words to you.

Affection's favorite memories of you drift in the air like colorful fireflies - they glow and flutter away as we attempt to collect them.

Resignation sighs and taps the glass jar we are supposed to keep them in.

The memories - they are unwilling to be caught and sealed and forgotten, as if affection is still here, she has never left, in the sense that she lingers like untold truths and the silence between two people as they wait for each other to continue the conversation.

We leave her memories in the now empty room, a reminder of her once significant existence. Resignation spares her grave one last glance before retreating into the shadows of a soul. I can hear affection's voice talking about you - even beyond life, she is determined to remember you.

She held on too hard, even as heartache cut her fingers.

She couldn't (she wouldn't) let go, so I had to kill her.

I kneel before her grave, the soft dirt staining my white socks, and kiss her tombstone before leaving her last letter to you beside resignation's rose.