| Take it, take it all, the bed we bought together back when we got our first unfurnished apartment. The kitchen table that arrived self-assembly that we both broke down in fits of giggles trying to put together. The plates, cups, knives and forks. The teapot my mother bought you when she came down to visit us in London. That was our first apartment together.
Memories, these objects are memories and you can have them. I don't want them, don't need them. They're all in here. I carry them with me in a way I couldn't carry the physical things you want to take now, but these images/thoughts burden me just as much.
We talk now, over dinner at some restaurant. We talk in this neutral meeting zone where neither of us need feel too close. In public is best. Where no moments can happen, where no impulses to be held, to want, to feel close can be followed. And that's it, the talk. Talking like we hadn't for a long time. Talking without the need to snap. Asking each other how we're doing. I never knew how you were doing when I lived with you, you never asked me. At the end was only a conflict, the shouts and bitter comments were more silent than the empty house at night when you stayed out for days on end with your friends, avoiding the return home.
History gone over, analysis done, wine finished and we part. And this, this is the strangest moment. We part, we walk away from each other in opposite directions. I was supposed to be walking in the same direction as you when we came out that restaurant. I should have been getting in that taxi and telling the driver our address. Going home.
It's gone now too, I moved out. That apartment was too big for one and I'm living elsewhere now anyway. Just like you. Living. Somewhere else, with someone else.
| 
