She tugs at the bow, and for the first time in--can it be nearly 20 years? It gives, and she lifts the lid and peers inside. On top there's a clear CD case and your scrawled (you wrote as carefully as you could) "Summer '99 mix" with a "love" appended to your name in thick bold strokes of the sharpie, but there's no liner notes and she could only guess (Steal My Sunshine, All the Small Things, Summer Girls, It's Not Right But It's Okay flit across her mind for brief spells). She pulls it aside to find a mini golf pencil and scorecard from a place that had long since closed and been paved over but that had the best ice cream and the brightest golf balls and a place you loved to just fritter away a warm summer night.

There's a dried wrist corsage still in there, brittle and brown, but still with a hint of the baby blue lace you asked the florist specially to use because her best friend confided in you that her homecoming dress would match that color and you were so clever as a go-between to pick it.

Underneath that are a few ticket stubs from movies you took her to--Never Been Kissed, American Pie, Episode I. And a napkin with a note you scrawled on a popcorn napkin at the cineplex that's now shut down but you shoved it in her jacket pocket when she went to use the bathroom and it took her 6 months to find it and you two laughed and laughed about it.

And under that are a stack of letters and notes, some passed between classes at school, the intermittent kind where she wrote a paragraph in that bubbly blue scrawl and you answered in your firm black pen, back and forth, turning the paper sideways to fit in the last of your responses. And a few letters you wrote when she was at her parents' cabin or you were on vacation and maybe even a postcard in there, hours of meticulous work you each put into communicating your souls to one another then entrusting to the post office to get that love of yours into her hands.

She drops it in the garbage bag and moves on to the last stray hangers in the back of the closet.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3851395&forum_id=2#35096336)

God Damn your BLACK SOUL TO HELL!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3851395&forum_id=2#35096626)

I forced myself to stop reading halfway through and then came back to finish it. I regret that choice.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3851395&forum_id=2#35166925)

HS girlfriends are all fat now or belong to Autism Awareness clubs for their fucked up kids from a first marriage etc.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3851395&forum_id=2#35167009)