We didn't love each other anymore, or at least the truth was somewhere in that vicinity...the desired result was separation, in any case. So we divided our things, which was worse somehow than the words themselves, the fractured concepts built together, even the profound joint narrative proven shallow. To divorce the books that had co-existed peacably, side by side, for years, their coats of dust unperturbed by our need to learn or consult; to remove the aloe plant from the window sill where it had shared a view of the garage across the street with the cactus, equally grounded there—these were the actions that caused great pain.

All of the large objects were yours, and the valuable ones too. The couch and armchair, the large desk, the cake mixer, the hard drive. The bed we had bought together, and I, stupidly, as I am wont to do, said 'just take it,'  feeling as I do a lack of attachment to and even resentment toward anything material in times of simultaneous misery and change. So you took the bed. But we had paid a friend a fifth of the normal price for it, it had been almost brand new. So how to put a value on things, how to ask you for half of the money back when that would not be enough anyway to provide me with another place to sleep at night?

Most of the spices in the cupboard were mine though. As you filled your boxes with your things from all around our apartment, I realized you were using the last box. 'I can put your spices in here,' you said. 'But then how will I get them?' I said. 'We'll see each other. It's not like we're breaking up or anything.' I looked at you, but you only returned the glance for a second before reaching for your bronze statuette, the one you had made at your parents' foundry when you were sixteen. It was a man with his arms outstretched, raised above his head, they were positioned as though they were holding something up to the heavens, something to be judged. The other piece, the one you couldn't find, was a large round sphere meant to represent the world, but although the man's hands fit perfectly around it, they were not in any way attached to it, fastened, as it were. I don't know where the world had disappeared to, but neither of us had seen it for months. I expected it to show its face when the furniture was moved out, but it never did.

We moved to different places with new doors and windows, and our beds felt different, and our hearts felt changed, but we still said 'we're together,' which did not last more than a few weeks, because it was really just made up, the still 'together' parting.

I wanted my spices back, so you said 'sure, come over anytime and pick them up.' But I didn't expect you to have mixed all of our former spices, which were mine, with your new roommates' spices, so I couldn't tell who the fuck's were who's, and it was shitty enough just being there that I didn't feel at all like rifling through your new cupboards, which were not mine, while one of your new cohabitants emptied a dustpan and rattled a doorknob. I had no idea whose cayenne or tumeric was whose. Without regard for overcrowding or duplicates, you had needlessly amalgamated. I could not justify looking, my memory failed me. I had never expected to have to recall the levels of various coloured powders, used for flavouring food, while at the same time taking into account how much might or might not have been used since I last saw them. Was I to make assumptions blindly and grab whatever bottle or worn baggy spoke to me? The situation was untenable, so I left, emptyhanded, wondering if you'd done it on purpose, if you'd known all along that taking what little was mine temporarily would turn into keeping what had once been mine till there was nothing left of it.