- 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.