Name inscribed...

I got my ring back today, with your name inscribed at the back. I forgot to look at your fingers, if you still wore yours. For many months now, I have wanted it, yet, now that I look at it, I don't know what to do with it. I remember when we got it. We had searched for many days. No, I was not the usual girl. You knew you could not ask me to marry you and then give me a ring, cos I would have said, "who sent you message?"....yeah, you knew.

So you asked me to go hunting with you, and boy did we go hunting! We searched everywhere and in the end, we decided we should have it made. I just could not find anything good enough. And then, on that day, in the heat of summer, after going to a jewelers who had to measure my finger and all, "there", you said, lets try one more...and there we found it. I just saw it and said, "thats it". You did not ask how much, you just bought it, and put it on my finger. That was the story of our ring.

For years, people would ask where we bought it. It was a ring that only I, could find. You had it all these months. I would think many times that one day, it would be on the finger of another woman. I would be on the metro, and there, on the finger of the most beautiful woman, would be my ring. I have mourned that ring a thousand times. It has died a thousand deaths.

It was lying in the velvet case, which you had put in a cheap bag. "Both your rings are there", you said. I did not look at you as you put it on the table. I pretended that I had no interest in them. Then you asked for the keys back. I started crying. Years have past, but I still have your keys. Perhaps this is the final closure. Your keys. My keys. I cried.

You, perhaps, have moved on. Like I thought I had. You perhaps, have another woman. Maybe she needs the keys. So I cried. But my mum had said, "its over now, let it go, let it go". Why did I hold on so long to your keys? I never went there, even once. I never took any of my things.

My bottles of prefumes are strewn all over my bed. You say, "I have never seen so many in my life". I wonder how you did not see me collect them all those years. Of all of them, you bought only one. "Live, jennifer lopez", I remember how disappointed you were by my reaction. Jennifer Lopez? Estee Lauder, Lancome,( with the accents) thats what I knew...Jennifer Lopez...

I could never be really grateful, could I? Thats perhaps what you thought. I can not find my red shoes in these boxes, you insist there is nothing of mine left at yours. You changed my bulb...the roof is too high and I can not reach...the hall way has been in darkness for more that a year now. "Don't you have any friends that are tall?" you ask, "I have no friends" I say.

I don't know why I feel so sad. Its the keys. I have held on for too long. Now you are gone, I call you and say "the red shoes are not here". I hear the irritation in your voice, you do not care.

Now I have even more boxes. All my books are here, except those you now refer to as "grandfather's". I wonder why you did not refer to them as such when nobody wanted them. When they were about to be thrown away, when you got mad at me for stubbornly insisting on keeping them all. Now you refer to them as "grandfather's". When everybody else wanted gold and silver, all I wanted were those old books about to be thrown out. Now they are not here, in these boxes, because they are "grandfather's". I have cried today, but it is okay. You have your keys, I have my perfumes, books and my ring. I guess that is all I wanted in the end.