Burn Victims

Wit’s End was at work the day that I decided to burn McBougie’s break-up box. He’d been gone a few hours and I knew I’d have some time to myself before he pulled back into the driveway. I reached under my bed and drew out the red and white heart-shaped package with both hands. It was about the size of a donut box and as heavy as a case of Coca-cola. After I slid the box into in the middle of the bedroom, I reached back under my bed to pull out several large sheets of paper and a few oversized objects that were too big for the box. I gathered the heap into my arms and carried it out the screen door. In the back yard, I let the pile fall to the ground and began searching for the gas can. I found it inside the door of the shed and shook it to make sure it was full. Then I checked the ashes of the fire pit to make sure there wasn’t any strange debris and began to unpack everything.

I’m not sure where McBougie found this box, but I remember how he'd given it to me. It was my Valentine’s Day gift the year before. McBougie had baked sugar cookies, each one with a different compliment written in runny icing on top. Thing’s like “You’re cute,” “You’re a good cuddlier,” etc. And on the outside of the box He’d written in red sharpie “I Love You Because…” He’d painted the box in red and white acrylic and left it on my bed for me to find on the evening of February fourteenth. The cookies were nibbled on over the next few days, with the box itself becoming the most significant gift. I knew the second I saw in sitting atop my camouflage comforter that McBougie had just given me his own break-up box. It was pure poetry.

Throughout the following year, everything material position that concerned our union went into the box. Photographs, ticket stubs, receipts, Christmas cards, dried flowers, a souvenir foam clown nose from a Cirque du Soleil performance, and countless notes written on post-its, loose-leaf, and bar napkins. I kept the giant heart under my bed with a small stack of t-shirts and three or four prints by textbook artists that he’d given me. All waiting for the day that one of us would leave the other one and I would have to torch them. I’ve accepted that the practice of keeping a break-up box is the definition of pessimistic, but I’d rather think of it as organized sensibility. I mean, who wants to find an old ticket stub to Wall-E in the cargo pocket of your shorts three months after the break-up? Not me. And not in cargo shorts, for that matter.

I was halfway through stoking a Georgia O’Keefe print and smother the matching t-shirts that we’d worn to a Harry Potter midnight premier when Wit’s End drove up. “You’re not supposed to be home, yet” I said without lifting my eyes from the fire. He stumbled over to me with a stupid grin and asked if he could help. I told him it wouldn’t feel right if he did. He’d seen the box before and often wondered why it was taking me so long to burn it. And I’d always turn red and dodge the question. He took out his iPhone and snapped a picture of the smoldering chaos. The face of a large white heart with flames licking the edges of it. “I’m making this my background. Just letting you know,” he stuttered with his Texan twang as he fiddled with his phone, adjusting the picture to the right size. “Oh, here and I got this for you.” He said and handed me a sky blue envelope. The card pictured two orange cats sitting at a candle-lit table and staring lovingly at one another. Inside it read, “Happy Three Months, Squirrel. I love you lots and lots. Xoxo.” I kissed him on the cheek and waited for the last of my history with McBougie to stop smoking before grabbing his hand and leading him back inside.

Wit’s End crept into the bathroom for a quick shower and change, and I was left alone on my bed. There, I listened for the water to start running before I opened my closet door, pulled down a TOMS shoe box from the top shelf, and slipped the sky blue envelope inside of it. I yanked a bulky hoodie over the box and returned to my bed where I stared blankly at the ceiling and wondered if the can of gas in the backyard would still have enough fuel in it to burn Wit’s End’s box by the time that he was no longer sleeping next to me and using up all the hot water.