Loosened endings

They sit in a cardboard shoe-box at the foot of my bed. A fleece-lined sweater. A white shirt. Two well-thumbed books; some homemade CDs. A bottle of aftershave, half-full.

They have been there for three months. They could be anything, a nondescript collection. Everything.

But not everything. Some things I have kept. On my bookshelf, a book I loved too much. A stuffed animal with a friendly face. A journal already written in.

If the goal were to erase, there are other things too, so many things carrying memories in their tucks and folds. Sometimes I wonder if I should burn them. Sometimes I think it would be the neatest solution.

But the things in the shoebox are not mine to destroy. Not his either. They are unwanted, unclaimed. I look up the word that is rattling in an unnamed corner of my mind.

or·phan (n): those words or short phrases at the end or beginning of paragraphs that are left to sit alone at the top or bottom of a column — separated from the rest of the paragraph.

Tonight I go through them again, for the last time. I pluck a ragged scrap of paper from its place as a bookmark; my handwriting.

I think again about burning, but I know I won't. Instead I put them away, in an old cupboard where things go that have no other place to go. I don't want to erase, just lay to rest.

To find a home for all these loose endings.