I stood looking down at it. The rain is coming down harder now and I wish I could put a stronger light in here. Do I really need to go through it? I mean, can’t I just put it right back up on the shelf? I sighed, sat down cross-legged and opened the top of the smushed cardboard box. It is amazing what you find in these boxes sometimes—concert tickets, movie tickets, airplane tickets, corks, cards, letters, notes, and so forth. A decade an a half of written sentiments and memories. I remember leaving notes for you constantly. Anytime you weren’t in your room in the old apartment, I’d leave you a note letting you know I stopped by. Cell phones were not a thing and waiting by the phone was a torturous activity we all endured.

The ouroboros. The snake eating itself, you remember it, it’s tattooed at the nape of my neck. The card stared at me through the pile of cards and letters. That was the very first card I gave you. I saw it at the local card shop and thought it was so cool. No end, no beginning — us basically. I took such care writing that card, it was the first time I put any kind of real romance into a card. I would use it later as the template for my first tattoo. It represented so much to me and for us, but just as all things I put stock in, symbolism had no place here.

I grabbed a bunch of cards out of the box and held them to my nose and inhaled deeply. It was dumb, but I wanted to see if I could still smell us. The only scent I got was remorse and sadness. “Love, Mom and Dad” on a hundred cards for each and every holiday. The photographs in here kill me. I put them in here to shut them from the light of day because they mean nothing to me now. The ones of those friends we thought we would grow old together with, the ones whose rocking chairs sat beside us as songs were sang and memories shared. HA! I ask myself, “Why do you even keep this shit?” I know why I do, I don’t like to forget my pain.

Maybe it was just us. Maybe it’s because we grew up in real neighborhoods with people we started 1st grade with and in a time of scrapes and cuts and an occasional street fight. Maybe it’s because our parents taught us manners, but to never be afraid of who you are no matter who it’s going to piss off. Wait, or was that us being fostered by our punk rock roots? I can’t remember. I do know this, all those trips we took with people, all those porch hangs and tours and random road trips and “oh, I’m so glad you are in our life” talks…meant a box full of false relationships. People act like the marks they leave on our hearts mean nothing.

You thought those friends would stay by your side, didn’t you? You thought they’d do weekly visits with you and read you the latest Onion headlines. You thought they’d feed you when you could barely hold your neck up. You thought, surely, after you were settled at your parent’s house, they would hang and have a whiskey with you. But they never did, did they? You and I have that common thread, when people leave us, they really leave us.

As I rifle through the cards…ooo a gift card, is this any good anymore?…it comes rushing back. “Hope you have a great tour and see you when you get home…” “Dear Wife, you make me so happy…””Happy Birthday”. I chuckle because I also have photos with cut out people in here and the infamous “Joyce Card”. The most current cards at the top —”I know things have been rough…””We will get through this…””We’ve had a rough year, but…” We weren’t always this magically perfect couple. As much as I wanted to see it that way. We both had our good and bad obstacles. I was resentful. You were getting bitter over your career. I think it brought out the worse sides of us, me at least.

I picked up the small card with pastel balloons on it. It’s a little crumpled. I held it up and read it slowly, “Happy Birthday, J”. It was the last physical note I’d ever gotten from you and it was the loudest. You weren’t here for that last birthday. We had built an entire relationship on cards and notes to each other, copious amounts of sentiments, love, always with heartfelt love. “Happy Birthday, J”. I would do anything to go back from that first note I wrote you and slipped under your bedroom door, and every postcard that got delivered from your tours, how I wish you were on tour. How I wish this was all some very long tour.

I sit here and look at this and I imagine you sitting across from me, laughing at some silly card your aunt gave us for Christmas and me griping about that very first NY trip we took and how C just had to have those bellbottoms. You’d look at me and say, “Hey! You know what?” I’d look at you with earnest eyes and I now exactly what you would say, “Burn the motherfuckers.” And we’d sit by the fire, whisky in hand toasting dead friendships of times past. It’s what I loved most about you, you always had my back. You even had that shitlist, remember? Every time someone did something horrible to me their name would go on that list and you literally banned them from your life. I have a serious lack of closure in most of these ends. It was extremely difficult divorcing you without so much of a word about it. The pressure from your parents was all I remember, that, and the day I sat at a bare desk in a lawyers office and signed my name to the last love letter you’d ever give me.

I have been sitting here with this pandora’s box for an hour now. My tears never seem to dissipate when I walk down memory lane, not just for you, but for the past I know I shouldn’t live in. Is it because I don’t want to forget? Maybe it’s the only thing that reminds me of what we shared in a tangible sense. I don’t have your clothes, I don’t have any remnants of you except fo these pieces of paper. I can’t even throw away the stacks of drum transcriptions because I fear if I do you’ll never be able to come back to it. I think maybe I don’t want the memory of us to fade into the darkness and be forgotten. It is in my darkest moments I hear your voice. In every dream I have of you, you are representing my fear and anxiety. This box is just a grave. These trinkets and cards the timeline of our history.

I close the box and take one deep breath in and exhale slowly, lifting the heavy box above me to place it on the closet shelf. Not today. I’m not ready to forget. I wonder what you would say to me now. If you’d look at me once more and tell me to let it go or if you’d take my hand and we’d continue back to the beginning where a girl who was madly in love with a boy, slipped a note under his bedroom door, “Hi, I came by. Call me if you wanna hang.” And…I’m still waiting by the phone.