: a memento growing along a wall
I left things behind, fetishes tied around the fences I wanted to infiltrate. I waited for people
to tell me to come back. I would have noticed anything they had forgotten. I thought my
“misplaced” belongings would be magnets, inexorably pulling relationships back to me,
bound to return that last piece of connection out of obligation. They did not.
: a memento obtained by moving slowly
The “Remember DQ!” bumper sticker. The cafeteria fork and knife I slid into my backpack..
The dusty soda bottles I collected on my dresser top. The Facebook notification emails,
proof I had been on the receiving end, once.
: a memento meant to become evident gradually
A message scrawled on a blank page in his notebook, inscribing myself into his work,
foreseeing his future surprise at my thoughtfulness, not foreseeing the break-up he initiated a
month and a half later. I thought constantly about that message I’d left and how it might
turn his mind around. If it didn’t, I wanted a new girlfriend to find it. I wanted her to flip
through the pages and find my singsong warning; I wanted to make her stomach drop out. I
wanted her to know someone had been there before.
: a memento approached slowly and stealthily
The night before Valentine’s Day, I would mouth my kiss onto conversation hearts before
sliding them into envelopes, spreading my desire like germs that would surely bind and
grow.
: a memento presented after sneaking up behind someone
I almost blurted I’m in a photograph of your daughter’s ninth birthday party, sitting on the stairs right
inside the door. I used to dangle on your backyard swing-set as we described our fantasy husbands. I have a
glass perfume bottle she brought back from Egypt sitting on my dresser on the other side of the country, but I
just said to her bewildered mother, “Well, tell her that I stopped by to say hi.”
: a memento of intrusion into someone else’s photograph
A friend-for-two-weeks from summer camp whom I found on social media, six years later,
living with the boy about whom she had written in one of her two post-camp letters to me—
she’d had an unbearable crush on the boy at the time. I sent her a message, informing her
that I had a letter she’d written about her current boyfriend, and I’d be happy to mail it if
she’d give me her address. She replied, and I sent the letter, but I never heard from her
again.
: a memento of the gradual, permanent deformation produced by a continued application of stress
I left a digital trail like a slug oozing slime: incandescent in the light, but something no one
wanted to touch.
——————-
Kristine Langley Mahler is a memoirist experimenting with the truth on the suburban prairie outside Omaha, Nebraska. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays 2019, received the Rafael Torch Award from Crab Orchard Review, won the 2019 Sundog Lit Collaboration Contest, and has been recently published in DIAGRAM, Ninth Letter, Brevity, The Normal School, and The Rumpus, among others. She is the Publisher/Editor-in-Chief at Split/Lip Press. Find more about her projects at kristinelangleymahler.com or @suburbanprairie.