Lamentation

Jeremy died a month ago today. I feel like a liar even writing it. Is that true? Did my boyfriend really die in a car accident in a goddamn Walgreen's parking lot last month?

All the times I thought about filling up the tank with gas and driving East until I ran out! All the fantasies about breaking up with him to be available to someone potentially cuter. My being unimpressed with his record collection.
This filthy burning hole in me, I never ever saw it coming.
Strangers don't understand my attempts to be cheerful that translate into high pitched cliches that go nowhere when I am ordering coffee or giving someone directions at work.

At night now, I smoke Menthol cigarettes out on the porch and knit. I was going to make my Mother a scarf for her birthday, but now I am making a hat for Jeremy. I knit, and with each poke of the needle I think about that life, and the life we had together.
We used to go grocery shopping every Thursday. He was a really good cook. His hands, the tentativeness of his touch, as if he almost wasn't there. He had dishwater colored hair and brilliantly bright eyes. He had a gradual smile. I was really attracted to him at the beginning.
I cry, and try to make the pokes tighter. I am not dealing with the heaps of dirty dishes he left in the sink, nor his scratchy, formless sweatsocks.

I knew a girl growing up, Stacie, whose sister drowned at summer camp. Her name was Vanessa. She was really short and had dark brown permed hair. She was really nice. Stacie had this pair of Jordache cutoffs that I totally coveted. She loaned them to Vanessa to wear at camp, and once Vanessa drowned, Stacie's mom wouldn't let her have them back. She kept Vanessa's whole duffel bag of camp clothes zipped up in her closet. She had a half eaten bag of peanut M & M's in her pocket and Stacie's best friend, Megan, told me that Stacie's mom shellacked each M and put them back in the bag,all so she could leave them in the pocket of the Jordaches where Vanessa had left them. I was always kind of pissed that I was never able to wear those cutoffs. It seemed like such a waste.

The remnants of the dead. All over my house, like depressing gold.