I remember the day I decided to put you away for good. The day I wiped you clean with a piece of soft cloth, wrapped you up in transparent white paper, and placed you inside a box that still housed the scent of its previous occupants. I sat down at my worn-out old desk, opened up my electric blue notebook with the squiggly lines on the cover and proceeded to stain the stark white pages with black ink. I first put down the place and date, then the time, and as I started writing, it began to feel as though the blood flowed out of my veins straight into a river that raged and burned.

I let you leave, I set you free, and then I watched you walk away, your skin tainted with the hours and the seconds that you breathed inside of me. But then I also put you away. Yes, I did. Inside that box with the lingering of dormant dreams. When people asked me where you where, I told them you had disappeared without a trace. They asked if I’d tried to find you and I replied in the negative. They asked why and I said I had no clue, that I did not know, and that I didn’t want to know what became of you. And so began the inevitable and intense process of preservation… you matured inside that box like a fragrant wine, and every single hour and minute that went by served as a cruel reminder of how I had failed miserably at trying to contain myself and who I was when I was with you. It was as futile as trying to put toothpaste back into the tube. How can one take something so beautiful and perfectly shaped and direct it back where it no longer belongs? How can one expect to imbibe the finest of spirits and escape the inevitable intoxication? How can one let the floodgates open and then stand back and blame it on the rain?

So I sat there in my self-imposed exile and watched the box with you inside glow in the engulfing darkness. I knew then that there was no escaping it, that you would always be a force to reckon with. I could succumb to it or I could bury the box and myself along with it. People no longer ask me about you but I know that if and when they do… my answer to them would be the same. Only this time, it would be a complete lie because you are here now. You. Are. Here.