I GATHER IT IS OVER
Between the two of us, he has always been the collector. Carpets, Tibetan Thangkas and etchings covered the walls and were stacked under bookshelves. When I moved in with him the apartment was already furnished and I did not make a great deal of changes to it. I often thought about how I was living in his world, but on most days that was how I liked it. It may have been his world, but it was our home and as such the first real home I had ever since moving out of my parent's house. We took turns buying groceries, took turns cooking and always shared our meals. We kept the apartment in shape; simple tasks like changing light bulbs or covering a hole in the wall filled me with an immense satisfaction. Most importantly we kept each other company. After dinner we stayed at the kitchen table and talked in flickering candlelight.
When I moved in I did bring my bric-à-brac; boxes made from wood or onyx, framed lace napkins and empty glasses that used to hold candle wax. I brought heaps of old movie tickets, coasters and letters in shoe cartons - things I gathered throughout our relationship. I developed a great interest for postcards because the ones he sent me from Marseille and Michigan were so pretty. I went on to buy postcards for myself and kept those in an album. His postcards I collected in a box together with other memorabilia.
I was greedy about those keepsakes. Sometimes we bickered about who gets to keep a programme or a napkin, reminding each other that "what's mine is yours and what is yours is mine". I wanted those things to be mine because of a constant fear that he would leave me and not leave me any of the photo booth strips or mini golf score sheets.
Years ago he bought a Victorian dress at an auction. He bought such things for himself, for his collection, but would allow me to try them on and occasionally wear them to, say, the opera. When I first tried on the dress it fit perfectly and he gazed at me with marvel - I have rarely felt admired like this. I begged him that very night to gift me the dress, but he refused. It must have been about two years later that he gave it to me as a birthday present alongside an invitation to go see Salomé.
This year I received my birthday present belatedly. I had asked him to include a letter, which he didn't. Feeling our home and relationship crumble, it became more and more important to me to gather things that I could hold on to. We had been fighting a lot during the weeks prior to my birthday, and when he had nothing to give to me that day I took it with silent disappointment.
I will leave this home with my bric-à-brac; a Wayang puppet, a bolero that doesn't fit me and multiple dried roses. But I wish he would leave me the Ottoman costume. He had not taken a photograph of me in a long time - "But how will you remember me? But won't you want to revisit this moment again and again, to remember us being young and in love and in the middle of a corn field close to some small village in the Austrian countryside?" - but there is one I rather like he'd taken of me in the spring of 2023. It shows me dressed up in said costume, sitting on the canapé, smiling. That night we were dancing in the living room with friends. Your painter friend took a picture as well; I wonder if he ever turned it into a drawing. He did draw us - my head uncomfortably resting in your lap - a couple of days later when we all had dinner at his aunt's apartment. I was too shy to ask to see it.
I wanted him to leave me his favourite book, which I haven't read within the four years of our relationship. "I will read it, I promise." I would read it in those first few weeks apart, hoping to feelclose to him. If we ever met again, I would like to be able to engage in a conversation about it. I would like for him to be proud. I had been a listener for so long, was just nodding at his passionate recounting, fascinated, without ever understanding completely.
I wanted him to leave me the Wyndham Lewis, which we paid for together because we couldn't decide on who should have it that day in a Detroit bookstore.
I wanted him to leave me the postcards and letters I sent to him for I was afraid he'd throw them away. My letters to him are some of the best writing I ever did.
I wanted him to leave me his textiles for a rather spiteful reason; I didn't want another girl to model them for him. I wanted him to leave me the children's sailor suit that, the day it arrived in the mail, filled me with excitement to see him as a father, which was always a long way down the road, but which I was for the longest time certain was what awaited us.
Walking through the apartment I am unsure what is mine and what is his and what it matters. I chose the tablecloth, I contributed the shoe rack and all of the baking equipment is mine. It all did not matter when everything was well because, again, "what's mine is yours" and so on and so forth. Every time I'd moved in the past, I forgot something, and something else got lost. I will have to buy pots, plates and cutlery of my own... and I will want it all to look exactly like what we cooked with and ate from together.
I wish I could keep the table that we carried home from the other end of town. People always commented on us moving furniture on public transport. I enjoyed those comments, I enjoyed the attention to our shared good taste. Alas, the table was expensive and he chose it and I don't want to rob him from the necessities. "Remember when we tried to sell a Gobelin and this man came to our apartment to look at it?" He pointed at every single piece of furniture and art in our living room asking "Why don't you sell me this instead? Come on, what's inside this cupboard?" I got mad. "We live here", I snapped, "we need a table and chairs, we need a bed frame".
I wanted him to send me all of the photographs he ever took of me or us or that friends took of us and only sent to him. I wanted him to send me the draft of the poem he said he wrote about me and never showed me. I wanted him to keep his promise and dedicate his first book to me. To send me a copy with a little note saying he still thinks of me every single day. I wanted him to write to me until we've said it all (though - I know - "there is no end of talking, there is no end of things in the heart").
"Wie scheint doch alles Werdende so krank!" He always liked it when I was quoting his favourite poems to him. Sickly, yes, but not becoming anything anymore. Last night he said it twice. "I think we both know it's over."
Isabella S. Poe, 25, Vienna - Austria ✯