I had a spade once , he says.

Threw it away.

I had a spade once , his voice says against the flakes of snow and the film of frozen condensed air caked against the small panel of glass that makes a window in the backdoor overlooking the now unkempt winter garden. He thinks about scratching his name into the blurry screen. Would he write it backwards or forwards? The question, like trying to recall the way her tongue always felt sliding down the shadows of his spine—melting and sticky like the soft serve ice cream cones he’d seen himself eating in outdated home movie footage, feels too hard to bear. The right sleeve of his shirt clears the window. He clears his throat. Shuts his eyes tight. The way he used to do when she’d call to him from the bathroom and he knew what it meant. That she’d bought some new outfit as a treat for him. The anticipation of placing his hands on her curves or her smell like warm vanilla and sugar became the thousands of swimming colors he’d see in that dark space of time. Blues and reds. Pinks and whites. This time the sparks don’t bring her into focus. He opens his eyes to the sugar coated shoe box sized window and the smell of the damp back porch. Like wet newspaper. Heavy and cold like the aftermath of bad news.

Last year they watched the full cycle of the snowdrops together in that unnamed way that people have of passing information about their lives without using words. He saw the joy of them in the way she sat close to him on the couch in the evenings with the weight of her body resting against his side. Resting like his new spade did on the stairs in the back porch. He hoped she knew he’d been paying attention to them too, when he let his fingers play out unplanned rhythms on the back of her neck—skimming the thin bones of her shoulders.

His hand reaching to touch her finds the knob. Chilled and stiff like the ache that’s taken hold suddenly across the back of his neck. She wanted to buy the more expensive model with the plate that matched better the exterior of the house. He feels cheap now, not having given her something so trivial that she’d wanted. As if the weight of the money saved and the moments lost might now crush his skeleton—reduce him to a fine dusty powder. Good for nothing. She was always too good for him. He knew it when they first rolled around together in the grass in this backyard. Loving her always felt too decadent. Like an undeserved promotion. Like flowers in winter. Something that could never last. That would last forever.

He lies down in her favorite place. The flower bed, now all frozen. He thinks about tangible things. The laws of gravity. The way ice polarizes itself to the edges of things before consuming them completely under a glassy finish. The way the weight of her head in his lap--when he used to hold her on the couch in the days after they knew for sure—always made him feel sane.

I had a spade once, he tells her. I left it in the garden and it got filled with this stinky putrid goo. He wonders if she can hear him. These mundane things he never would have told her when she was alive. The words catch in his throat like the rusted hinges of the gate just on the other side of the yard. He digs the fingers of his left hand into the resistant ground and resolves to replace the backdoor knob. Clenches his jaw hard enough to feel a spark. After you left, he whispers and his breath freezes and shimmers in the space between his lips and the sky, I threw it away.