I broke the paperweight today.

The one that you gave me, before you left for good.

I remember thinking, at the time, that it was a pretty lousy gift

for all the things I’d given you.

The painful, sleepless nights,

the arguments,

the shattered feelings and

broken dreams;

the silent reception of small, sharp words

like slivers of glass in my skin,

the times you were hurting so bad yourself

you took it out on me.

You tore me up, wore me down,

threw me out, then walked away,

leaving me with this lump of glass and paint (now shattered)

like a talisman to protect me, in the future,

from people like you.

And yet

somehow

like these shards of glass on my floor,

I find you in unexpected places.

When I’m walking barefoot through the room,

when I’m going through old photographs,

when I’m trawling through my memories,

I accidentally step --

stumble --

on you,

and I have to remind myself that I’ll never see you again,

or have to deal with you again,

and I feel that bittersweet mix of relief and sadness,

and that old anger.

So now,

with this last remnant of you all but gone,

shattered, in fact,

just like I was,

perhaps, now, I can learn:

to sweep away the pieces,

pick up the errant shards, carefully;

put them, without ceremony, in the trash,

and walk slowly away,

so that when the dust finally covers the small circle

that chunk of memories occupied,

there will be no more remnants

and no more shards

and I will find myself,

occasionally,

forgetting it was ever there at all.