Pepper

For P.

I packed your spices today. I wrapped them in that scarf your sister gave me last winter, a discarded gift that someone else gave her over the holidays and she did't want to keep. In their place, the place where the spices used to stand, across from my bed, first thing I saw in the morning, in their place I put The Fountainhead. I pinned it to the wall, so that it's floating, half open, staring at me before going to bed, the first thing I see when I wake up. I packed away your letters and the few things you still left behind after our final farewell. Plane tickets. Those cheap earrings you got for my sisters at the artisans market because I refused to let you buy something expensive. The postcard that your lover, the one who triggered the end of us, sent me as a response to the gift I got her, those expensive earrings I got for the woman you shared a bed with during my absence. She got those earrings from me, and a few hours later went to bed with you, and a few days later wrote me a thank you note, and a few months later we broke. Funny, how life operates. The box is sitting outside my door. I still haven't decided what to do with it. Who knows, one night I might feel adding some extra pepper to my stew.