“Don’t call me sweetheart.” She says and turns to close the door.

I leap. It’s not a run or a fast walk but a lunging of myself at her turned back. I whirl her around and grab her tiny throat with one hand, all the force inside of me slamming her back against the closed door.

I’m screaming.

Calmness.

Overwhelming, dreadful, numbing, stinging calmness.

I’m still holding the chest and I can see the gun, peeking out from beneath so many soiled memories. The door closes in slow-motion and the box of yellow-grey sunlight shrinks and sucks itself away. I can almost hear the slurping sound of shadows swallowing the empty apartment.

She reaches for the light-switch and flips it upward. Phony, cold, pale-orange light floods the room.

She stares at me. I stare back, motionless.

Impatiently, “So?”

My mind is racing to find words. Thoughts and memories bounce around like clothing in a dryer.

I start, “I don’t know, Maggs, I guess I—” Frustration burns inside me and the calmness waivers, trembles. Words don’t come. That familiar and constant loss of vocabulary strikes me and I want to break something. Put my fist through the wall. Pick up the loan chair and pitch it across the room. Kick and scream and bite and curse because I am so **** pissed for so many **** reasons and I can’t express it, can’t make her understand, can’t say what I want to say because I don’t know how. Because words ruin things.

Only this boiling, pungent frustration. Only this calmness. This paralysis.

She’s staring at me with that practiced look. Patronizing and fake; rehearsed.

Too much silence. Too much stillness. She ends it. She’s good at that.

“I gotta go.” She says it quietly, sadly, but she’s acting.

I’m a statue with teary, bloodshot eyes as she turns and leaves. When the door clicks shut my arms loosen and the chest drops to the floor with a loud crack. It may have broken but I don’t look right away, I just stare at the door. She’s gone.

Could I have said something? Could I have changed anything? Today, yesterday? A week ago? A month ago?

If we’d never met, things would be better. I’d rather be alone and depressed and wishing for love. At least in that depression there were glimmers of hope; good things I could tell myself to keep from going over the ledge. But now it is as though love has come, and found me unfit. All of those depressing thoughts finally proven. That feeling of being obsolete, unwanted; once just a theory and now a fact.

I look down and see the pictures and poems and other fossils.

I see the gun.

I imagine my brains and blood and bits of my skull splattered across the floor. I imagine her reaction when she finds me. She might understand then, she might feel as badly as I do now.

Of course I won’t.

I stand unmoving in a pile of self pity.

How could she do this to me?

How long has she lied? Since the beginning? Has it always been fake? Plastic like this white chair? How long has she been an actress, playing a role in my life?

Another wave of seething anger. I ball my fists and clench my teeth until they hurt.

How could she do this to me?

I’m still staring at the broken chest and scattered paper on the ground.

Broken and scattered.

I see a piece of binder paper, the left edge jagged and uneven from being torn out of a notebook. A memory, just as jagged, plays itself in my mind.

We had just started dating. Sitting together in City College and she slides me this poem. So cheesy and stupid but wonderful.

I bend down and pick it up. As I read it I want to cry or maybe scream or maybe pick up the gun. But only calmness.

To my love:

Let me count the ways

My time with you passes like summer days

Sweet and long.

I find a normal comfort

Entwined in your arms.

Live, laugh, breathe…

This world belongs to you and me.

Take me away to a better place

Lies. Acting. Phony orange light and plastic chairs.

I crumble the paper into a ball and drop it. It hits silently and rolls.

I bend down and begin to gather the contents of my treasure chest. The chest itself is busted, but still works well enough to store the memories. As I shove them carelessly inside I think that I should burn all of this. Destroy it all and let the smoke clear. I tell myself yes, that’s what should be done. Don’t dwell. Don’t let this fester in a broken box.

Burn it all.

Somehow, though, I know I won’t.

Somehow I know that I will never bring myself to let this go. I can’t. Just store it all and let the calmness have you.

Overwhelming, dreadful, numbing, stinging calmness.