by Kate Maruyama

Two T-shirts, one sock, five CDs, three mournful mix tapes (maybe I should have known when you made me two in a row). One Portuguese/English dictionary—were we ever really going to Rio? One book of Proust. No, I was never going to read it, I can say that now. Nor the Jack Kerouac, nor The Infinite Jest. It was sweet how you were constantly trying to improve me.

One two-way dildo you gave me on my 28^th birthday; you wanted to have a threesome with our neighbor (really?). One jar of partially used chocolate body paint (that was fun, but we only used it once). Two razors, one of your fancy-ass too big to brush with toothbrushes. One pair of expensive Italian leather shoes you bought, wore home and never wore again. You were trying to prove you were metrosexual. Guess what? You’re not.

Maxwell’s dog collar. It was an accident. You need to move on.

One program from Anu and George’s wedding. Wedding tent, citar music, bare feet and spinning. We closed the place. Two tickets to U2 in the park, Shakespeare in the park, Earth Day in the park. One cardboard coaster from the night we first met at O’Leary’s. Green was never your color, but you worked that hat.

And one set of stripey black and burgundy sheets. I never did like them, even though I pretended to.

Please send my notebook to me when you have the time. I left it on the counter beside the stove that time you stopped me in the middle of things, just to kiss.

Kate Maruyama’s work has appeared on Salon.com, The Rumpus, The Citron Review and Gemini Magazine. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Dzanc’s Best of the Web. With Diane Sherlock, she founded Annotationnation.com, a site that looks at fiction in terms of craft.