Shortly after the breakup, you begin to forget the little details, the ones you mapped with fingers (and mouth) in the dark, over and over, letting them curve grooves into you like a record to be replayed at will. Bit by bit, they fade away. In the beginning, it is the timbre in their voice, the specific intonation of words, murmuring away into the darkness like so many syllables. It is as inevitable as time.

The skin between the shoulder blades is the first, the soft, slightly oily skin that shivers with the passing (lightly) of fingers, murmuring between the synapses and away. A hundred times it whispered for you; now it is nothing, a blank space in your mind that cannot be recalled. Memory is the pattern of sand on a beach, blown away by the winds of time and the march of entropy ticking down the clock.

Next? The color of their eyes, the specific bits of hue and light caught in the iris as they gaze down at you, the crinkle at the corners when they smile, the faint lines of their face and the curve of the brow above. The eyebrow, arching and shifting with them.

The smell, perhaps, pheromones, hormones, testosterone, the faint sheen of sweat, the scent of a lover, may be the worst. Day after day, you press your nose into their shirt, their coat, the abandoned sweatshirt, the sheets you leave unwashed in the hamper, until that too is gone, and it fades away as if it never was. The sensory loss, that last bit of physical connection, feels more final than the closing of the door at the end of it all, the last argument. They are gone now, wholly from you.

Perhaps you will burn their letters, curling at the edges and whispering into silvery ash, then regret it. Perhaps it is e-mail, deleted hastily, then mourned. Perhaps you can never forget - but you will. Oh, how you will forget.