Curio

I have collected pieces of you throughout the years, as if each intersection of our lives was a tourist destination. I always exited through the gift shop with a trinket, something to commemorate the memory with. Like all bobbles procured in the impulsive haze of a new experience, those memories end up relegated to the backs of bookshelves, cabinets, and my mind. 

I have collected pieces of you throughout the years, in hopes that one day I might collect enough memories to create a new you. Cobbled together with foolish hopes born in the echoes of toasts, and laughs, and lingering hugs that bleed into a flatlining past. But I was not written by Shelley’s hands, even if I create monsters out of men. 

I have collected pieces of you throughout the years, enough to fill the halls of esteemed museums across the world. But museums are for artifacts that hold importance for many, and I am just me. Alone with my memories and the relics of the past. My past. Our history.

I have left pieces of myself throughout your life, like little notes tucked into the pages of well-loved novels. A memory torn from the past, a name that brings it all back, an inescapable truth. Those pieces of me reside in the shadows, but not in the shadow of you. They are alive inside your darkest days and haunt the halls you are afraid to walk alone.