red

was the color of the 

coat

you always wore. Everybody else in our writing class remembered you for that one feature. I didn't, but you pointed it out to me "who else wears a red coat?"

The perfume you used was 

Dolce and Gabbana

Blue. I had never smelled it before you. And it was only after we were broken up that I smelled it nearly every week.

You once wrote me a

poem

and painted the other side of the sheet. Within the painting you said "whatever happens between us, please keep this."

I don't know why I don't keep anything from my past. There was once a time when I deliberately did it to prove a point. That I wasn't sentimental. But then I see my wife go through her pictures and cards she had received -- she's kept them all -- and I think of how foolish I was for sticking to such an 

ideology

.

What does one obtain from not being attached to objects? I thought it meant I could never be 

nostalgic

. But I'm sitting here drinking this tea thinking about you. So I still am nostalgic. Would having an object make this feel better? Curiously my wife is not nostalgic at all. She keeps everything people send her, and she's grateful for it. And the objects mean a lot to her even years after.

But I never sense her leaving the present for even a heart beat. Perhaps I never let myself accept gifts with open arms because I knew I'd eventually lose them. And I'd rather see myself as oblivious and cruel rather than hopelessly disorganized.