• Lipton black tea, no sugar, no milk.
  • The Pretenders.
  • Long, thick, wavy black hair.
  • British accents.
  • Smartfood white cheddar popcorn.
  • Chanel Rouge Coco lipstick no. 434, Mademoiselle.
  • The Home Shopping Network playing for hours in the background.
  • Onion bagels and Neufchatel cream cheese.
  • Thomas English muffins, burned.
  • Adding milk to scrambled eggs.
  • Randy Newman.
  • Gin and ginger ale.
  • The sound of someone walking upstairs, the creak and moan of the floor. How my heart starts to beat more anxiously even though I live alone now.
  • Dark glasses. No one even notices your lazy eye.
  • Pen and ink on fiberglass paper.
  • Whispering in the dark at 10PM. Listening to the screaming in the room next door. If you know we’re awake you’ll want to yell at us, too.
  • Lipton noodle soup powder. Always the stovetop, never the microwave.
  • Maxfield Parrish.
  • The Cider House Rules. Madame Bovary. Taking these books away from me so I wouldn’t ask questions about the material. Taking them back and hiding them under my mattress.
  • Floral button-down shirts from the Salvation Army.
  • Skeletal thinness. Feeling the bones of your shoulders through the blouse.
  • Love’s Baby Soft.
  • Embroidered handkerchiefs. Silk scarves. I have a box in my closet with some of yours. I want to see how long they’ll smell like you.