The empty apartment
I take each picture of us down slowly. They don’t belong on these walls anymore. With each one, the parts of me that believed in the moments in those pictures get pulled out of me. Each more excruciating than the one before. They don’t go easy. Even as I put the pictures on the floor, those parts of me hold on. They hold on to the matte glare that shines from the prints and hide between the tiny cracks in the wooden frames. I let them linger. It’s okay, I tell myself. I don’t want to rush this. Some of these pictures are 16 years old. They deserve to hold on for a bit.