I don’t want my hair-clip back.
Two of the tines are broken, and my hair is too shaggy for a claw.
What I want is left behind where those broken tines are. I want it back on his porch, on his bed—on the backseat of my car.
From the plastic digging into my hand, feeling the concrete besides the dusty bike bake into my flip-flops, I want the past.
I want an I miss you. I want an I’m sorry.
I want back the “you taste good.” I want it back like the tree yearns for the fruit. The same way branches feel lighter without the fruits of their labor dangling above the ground.
Behind the feeling of “you’re beautiful,” I cannot taste tonight’s breakfast. It clings like smoke on the backs of my teeth, floating around like the ghost the body has turned into. Heavy, and sticky, I want it like the syrup smell in the morning. Attached to his memory, sure, but attached to me even stronger.
These all come with that small, shitty piece of plastic. And I have them in the other things—the lipgloss on my desk, once caught in his teeth, the containers on my desk, once smeared on his fingers. They all remain in my possession, easily passed back to my memory.
This claw clip does not hold anything deeper. Darker. But it is my final hold on the best-worst time of my life. While the clip resides on his shelf, where I have left it to rot besides the things he cannot throw out but cannot look at either, I could be allowed back in. Reclaim the time spent as good things earned.
I take the clip back: it’s over. Harder than the closed door of his truck the last afternoon I kissed him. We become nothing—lovers to dust and friends to dirt. Lipgloss becomes lipgloss and Ikea joins the pool of bad things under your tongue.
It’s too much to stay, but far too little to go. I stare at this clip through walls, through time and space and weekends and I’m sorries. Hoping for what? An open door, a hand on my shoulder, his mouth on mine?
Or am I hoping for thrown cups, hard words and glossy eyes? What am I looking for that will make me happy enough to split free from this?
But I am no more than me. I am looking for what will set me right, what can prop up the pieces I am tying together? A what, or who, or how?
I want like wood for fire, like salt for water. I want in a way like broken glass. I spend my nights, for now, leant out the window for smoke. It wreathes like a cloth over the dim streetlights. It sticks down my neck, pulls at my hair. My claw clip will pull it away.