TRINKETS

An alarming amount of friends have left my life this season. I think of them as trinkets. 

They are dehydrated flowers, stuffed bears, and fridge magnets I hoard to show I’ve lived and moved, here’s a dead thing to prove it. They are bean burritos and people on subway billboards, flashing on and off in their own dimensions.  If you are reading, am I also a dead thing to you? 

Time moves in eons when you’ve changed and the physical world is unfurling to mirror it, like realizing you need to pee in the beginning of a movie. I’ve shed a lot of skin, but most people wouldn’t notice. I steal my roommate’s grapefruit scrub in the shower, but my arms reach for the ingredients that remind me of you. Nothing has rubbed off. You are in my tendons, myosin, and muscle memory. I walk past you on a hilly memorial and realize I am one of those people who hurts others too.