i used to try to document everything. every message from everyone who ever loved (or said they loved or those i tried to love and ended up hating or vice versa). note cards. and postcards and tickets of every sort. planes, films, mini-cabs, buses, museums and pubs. i saved every photograph. digital and otherwise. saved. not savored or learned from or sanctified. no. that would be one thing. but it isn't. it's something else. and, if i'd kept it all. now. i'd make a super speed version of all those late-night photograph mistakes and videos of drunken, philosophical, insane, raving manic versions of myself. all these carbon copies mashups. cataloged and ready to prove me wrong or you right. to sneak some secreted version of the whole goddamned thing onto the record.

then, one day, i piled everything up into the rubbish. selected every last file and hit the delete key.

and then, You were gone.