Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

 At twenty-one minutes to midnight, my phone said, "Annessa, We're over."  I couldn't breathe, and I felt my heart stop.  My heart hasn't beat the same in the days since.  Like a country song, it hurts to breathe.  A handful of messages later, after I begged, he called in the cruelty of it all.   Our lives have been playing like a video reel in my mind, and us laughing for no reason while we rolled through yellow lights touching his Jeep's ceiling, driving down from Denver as darkness covered and snow fell. We wondered how anyone in Colorado got out of their driveways alive; we joked they probably weren't from there anyway. Our dogs carry beef rolls in the yard like cigars. Him popping out his elbow for me to take his arm as we walked down streets, across parking lots, or nearly anywhere. Him picking me up at the airport nervous, him picking me up at the airport and wrapping his arms around me to say, "welcome home." Our seemingly endless days an...

I've been back from my summer away for nearly two months. I finally put all my jewelry away that had been sitting in a lock box. I'd fish out a piece every now and then, but mostly I'd been wearing the hull I'd pulled out for the summer. That's how these things usually go. Yet, as I pulled the pieces from the box, I wasn't prepared for the memories woven into silver and stone. The black beaded chocker I wore to a friend's Vegas wedding, for which I was the Maid of Honor. She and I don't speak anymore, yet I can't pass on the necklace I've long not worn. It hangs on a back hook in the jewelry case, so I rarely see it. Memories of our twenty-year friendship linger, pervasive, and are here to stay like a roach infestation that baffles the best Orkin man, yet I won't reach out. Read a few posts back, as my heart doesn't have it left in me.     I don't have jewelry from my sister. There's a ring I bought for my Dad to give her. It'...