the difference between missing and remembering
At my last apartment, with different roommates, our bathroom sink would always be littered with tiny, curling strands of blue fuzz. And that would be strange to me, because it did not match the color of any of our towels. Where did that fuzz come from?
This is what I am thinking as I bend down to spit out my toothpaste, eye to porcelain with a different sink, with different people. There is no fuzz on this sink. There is some water, and there is nothing else. It looks empty, the way this place feels.
I remember then, too, a boy I used to sleep with. His sheets were black flannel, and he washed them infrequently. In the mornings, there would always be traces of its fuzz inside my nose, and if I'd been sleeping naked, there would be some on the toilet paper after my morning pee.
It was something unendearing--something I grew to hate--not because the fuzz itself was bothersome, but because I knew if my sheets had ever left such gifts behind on him, I would hear about it for days. Somehow, I would be to blame. And so in the mornings, in his bathroom, I would blow my nose and quietly hate him.
This is what I am thinking as I bend down to spit out my toothpaste, eye to porcelain with a different sink, with different people. There is no fuzz on this sink. There is some water, and there is nothing else. It looks empty, the way this place feels.
I remember then, too, a boy I used to sleep with. His sheets were black flannel, and he washed them infrequently. In the mornings, there would always be traces of its fuzz inside my nose, and if I'd been sleeping naked, there would be some on the toilet paper after my morning pee.
It was something unendearing--something I grew to hate--not because the fuzz itself was bothersome, but because I knew if my sheets had ever left such gifts behind on him, I would hear about it for days. Somehow, I would be to blame. And so in the mornings, in his bathroom, I would blow my nose and quietly hate him.