Where did all this stuff come from anyway?

I am being cruel with my things, tossing all the clothes I've bought over the course of a lifetime into one of three piles -- items to keep, donations to Goodwill, and trash.

I want to ignore the memories that permeate the fabric like a perfume I used to wear, but don't anymore. But here they are, like a gnat buzzing around my face. I swat. But they return.

I am finally getting rid of the black cardigan I wore the last time I saw him. Before I found out he was getting engaged. Almost a year to the day he asked me to leave the apartment we picked out together. Fuck memory lane. To Goodwill with you.

But the red top stays. I wore it that one day, walking down the street in West Chester, Pa., when the guy slammed on his brakes, rolled down the window, and shouted that I looked great in red. Those kinds of things, a girl has to keep. I’ll be dragging it to the nursing home with me like Linus’s blanket, telling the bored looking woman giving me a sponge bath “You wouldn’t know it now, but one day back in 2001 I actually stopped traffic. By the way, what’s my name again?”