Parting Gifts Redux

Before he left he gave me five gifts. Then he left. Five gifts one for each sense. He was a shit like that. Before I left I opened them. He gave me perfume. He hated the one I wore; he wanted me to smell like he imagined. I never smelt like he imagined, but he imagined I did. For taste he bought me an interior design catalogue because he said I had none. Arrogance was one of his better qualities. He gave me a photo, so I could remember what he looked like. Every time we were apart I forgot. I could never remember that vanilla face of his. I confused it with someone I used to know. He didn’t like that. The fourth gift was his telephone number, to call in case I wanted to hear his voice. I set fire to that number, even though I knew it off by heart, I set fire to it and listened as it sputtered and crackled. For touch he gave me his shirt, the shirt I slept in when he was away, when I missed him; the shirt he'd wear the next day because it smelt of me, or whatever he imagined. I took those things and put them in the box. I went down to the river. I took the steps down onto the muddy bank, and I floated the box out onto the oily water. It was raining, the water coming up to meet the drops that struck the surface. I stood on the bridge for a while, with the traffic brushing by my side, and watched the box fill with water and slip slowly beneath the darkened surface. Then I let go.