I Have Decided
by Holly Day
If you don’t talk to someone, if enough time has passed between conversations
that person has essentially disappeared. They’re just gone.
It’s not like when you leave milk in the refrigerator for too long
and it gets sour and chalky, or when you forget to pay your bills
and the electricity or the water get shut off. If you forget about people
they turn into something else and fade away.
There is a drawer in my bedroom full of postcards and letters
from someone I’m forgetting.
Sometimes, when I walk by the drawer, I think I should open it just to see
if the stacks of correspondence are still there, or if they’ve been disappeared
by tiny mouse teeth or by the sheer force of my disinterest. I imagine them
fluttering against the wooden plane of their confinement, like single-minded moths
determined to remain relevant, determined to exist.
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