I wake to the memory of the smell of you so real I can't believe you're not there, or rather here, where I am. Here with me. Your scent not the sole thing that comes to me and wakes me from dreams. How your skin looked in the light from a storm, how it felt when you would lace your fingers in my hair. I tell my memories to heel, to heal, to do as I bid and for the most part I have been shiny. After all the reason you are not here is because you are there, the place where I left. I have fought already enough to know that there are lines you can toe and lines you can only walk away from, faster or slower and faster is always faster. My head in another lap, my hair brushed behind my ear again, my eyes close against what's coming, the pounding in my throat, and a voice above me says it has feelings but they're never for me, no more kisses for me, no more tongue, no more lips, gone. No need to play the vamp, repetition is boring for everyone. Another wedge between my heart and my mind and even while the welting pain rises I am packing the room, planning to leave no footprints. And as soon as I find my shoes, I'm gone; it's what I said then and that's all you need to know.

And we are shopping again, hooray. The second-hand shops, the malls, the boutiques, every city has a shopping district, a store, clothes on the rack and sales tags telling you more than you need to know about each item. The doors hiss open and the store is warm inside, the security guard just nods, the music is good enough you can take off your headphones and figure out what people listen to these days. One hand flicks across each rack, nope, nope, nope. Swipe right. You've got a good eye now, you can tell what isn't going to work.

What's harder is telling what MIGHT work. What you would honestly like is something you can put on and feel instantly at home in and also wear out with friends. You do not want a dress for parties, not silk nor leather nor fur. Something that matches a bowl of popcorn and a good movie, something cuddly and soft, something that brings out the color in your eyes. Something that makes you feel good about waking up. Something that lasts, durable. Not something for every day, as you have black t-shirts and sweatpants already, but something that COULD be everyday. 

There is nothing like that in this store. But you are not yet ready to give up, so you narrow your desires. It is possible that you are expecting too much from one outfit; maybe you should try several. Something practical, something fancy? Cargo pants, a plunging neckline? Here are some sequined leggings on sale and they're in your size! Here is a blue sweater that looks warm enough to keep you cozy for the last month of winter. Here is a t-shirt with a witty saying. Here is a wine-colored shirt that might do.

It might do, it all might do. When the weight of the hangers has bent back your fingers to the point of pain you carry it all into the dressing room and strip under the fluorescent lights and try it on, and try it on, and try it on. Nothing is quite right. It's never bad, because you don't pick bad things; it's never exactly what you wanted but you need something, it's too cold to go naked after all, and leaving empty-handed is sometimes more depressing than compromise. And it could be the light you're looking at things in, harsh and unforgiving. Or it could be just that you're not attracted by this season's fashions. Sooner or later you may come to admit that the problem is you. That in a store full of clothes a person who cannot find a single outfit is doing something wrong, is in fact wrong in some concrete nameable way. But that's sooner or later; today you grab another black t-shirt and hand over your credit card and put your headphones back on and call it a day. Which it was. 

I'm not letting go, because I'm sad about it and I think I will still feel spots of regret for a while yet. Things I haven't even realized I'm missing yet, that sudden pang of desire, the realization that one thing is gone, and the whole loss comes back in. It's not an ocean of sorrow; it's a pond, but for the moment I'm wallowing in it. The loss of art, of the language of love, of small treats I didn't need but wouldn't give myself. Tokens, mementos, silk and sand. 

I will eventually remember and then give up in turn on everything that I lost — replace some with similar things; find new interesting distractions to fill the holes that are gaping with irretrievable losses. The first step is realizing you really have lost it; the second step is deciding what you need and getting it elsewhere; the third step is figuring out how to compensate for what cannot be replaced, and the fourth step so on and on. I will take step after step, because that is how you move on, and my life will smooth over and I will be able to remember everything I had without feeling particularly wrecked about the fact that I don't have any of it any more.

And I have said and will say again that in the scheme of things this loss is nothing much; trivial. My sadness is indulgent. The art of longing is performed against a backdrop rich with having; otherwise it is need, which this is not. I'm not stupid. I'm just a little sad; permit me this: a little sad, for one week longer. And then the gates close anyway, even on the hope I no longer hold.

But while I swear I will get over the loss, I equally promise that I won't forget the experience. I don't let go of that and I don't move on, because if I can't learn from it then it was for nothing. And the next time somebody says "let me hold that for you; trust me!" I will hesitate, hold what is precious to me to my chest for one minute longer before I think about releasing it, think a little harder about what the loss might mean. I'm not saying I won't trust them; I'm saying if I don't realize that it's a risk, I'm a fool. That's what I've learned. No matter how sweetly spoken, a promise to protect what I value doesn't mean what I thought it meant; it doesn't mean I can't lose it anyway. Because I have certainly lost this. 

I know how it is, it's late at night and you're at your parents, sleeping in your old bed, the room that was yours and that your mother always intended to make into a craft room of some sort, she said so when you left for college, but then you were coming back, summers, working at the Baskin Robbins and staying with them to try to save money. By the time you finally moved somewhere permanent, you left such detritus in your wake that the makeover seemed like too much effort. Anyway your parents sit together most nights, staring at the TV, no time or energy for crafting. So the room remains something like a time capsule, an homage to the person you were when you moved out, the kind of person who still bought posters with inspirational sayings on them and slept in a single bed. And now it's late at night, and you're under the cartoon bedspread (you took the black one you bought as a teen to college with you, where Shannon spilled beer on it and ruined it, so all you have at home is the bedspread you got for your eighth birthday). The noise from the television has stopped, your father snapping off the lights as he climbed the stairs behind your mother, and the only sound is a branch tapping occasionally on the window outside. So just you now, awake in the dark, the tapping branch, the creaks that an old house makes, your thoughts.