If there’s one thing I have to be really sorry for, it’s him.

It, not Him. Not a person but a thing. Because that’s all he was, like an ugly vase, an impulse buy, shitty makeup in shiny plastic. Something that creates the itch to steal. Wasn’t worth it, of course. Then it’s sitting around in the house instead of something more substantial, instead of the money or dignity you might have preserved without dragging it home.

He might have thought the same about me.

It wasn’t the two cars and the house that got to me, I could get any of that on my own, or even the broad shoulders and the crooked little smile. I think it was the scar. A crack in the object that made me think, how beautiful and how damaged; I’m the only one who sees it as something worth taking. The rightful owner won’t miss this.

The twisty red ribbon of a scar that he always said was from some heroic fight or other. It took a while for him to make the mistake of telling me what really did it. I wish that cat had taken his eyes out too.

What’s done is done, you might say. You’d say when you love someone, there’s never a need to say you’re sorry.

And I would say of course, why waste words?