comforter

          She sat curled in a ball under the heavy, coarse comforter that they'd bought together a few months ago.  It was a comforter she hated, one she only pretended to like because he loved it so much.  It was a comforter that made her hate the look of their bedroom.  It was a representation of what their relationship had become: a compromise, indifferent acceptance.  The realization that he was everywhere was something she'd never be able to escape.  In a fit of irrational recognition, she flung the covers off and across the room.  With a small amount of adrenaline coursing through her, she leapt from the bed, craving that feeling to take over completely.  She ripped the sheets from the mattress and aimed them in the same corner.  She closed her eyes and reached within her, gulping up her renewed strength, even if she did know it was only fleeting, fueling her like a drug; her chest heaving, her body shaking, she quickly surveyed the room for other signs of him.  The picture of them together when they spent a summer on the beach lay just within her reach.  She snatched it up and threw it against the wall, the glass shattering in a high-pitched, succinct melody, the frame in splintered pieces - all of it a perfect reflection of what had become of them.  She reached for another frame, of them at her parent's house for Christmas the year before, and she heaved it at another wall, the wonderful noise resonating for only a brief moment.  Again and again she destroyed every image that captured a time when things were happy, orderly, sublime.  She tore at the posters on the walls, of bands they both loved, and shredded them into bits, her bare feet treading dangerously close to the shards of broken glass as she made her way around the entire room.  She was clueless to the hazard, overtaken by the need to cleanse herself.

          But that wasn't enough for her; destroying his memory was something that could only be done on the outside, to physical objects.  He still remained inside her, and for all she knew he'd never go away.  Wild-eyed and frantic she darted around continuing to demolish his existence in every space of her surroundings.  But no matter what she got rid of, nothing seemed to fetter or extinguish those images in her head, those memories in her mind, those feelings that had become second nature.  She fell to the floor, surrounded by all the things that had once been tidy and placed in their rightful places and were now an unconventional way to decorate a space.  She tore at her hair, yelled to the empty apartment, let tears flow freely down her already raw cheeks, and rocked herself, whispering for some higher power to take away every thought of him.  She knew that if someone walked in on her at that moment, they'd have her committed; this was not how a sane person reacted to a situation.  She let out sobs of anger and hurt and after hours of this, she gathered the last remnants of the previously abundant energy and padded her way back to her destroyed bedroom.  She stared at what had become of it.  After a few silent and still moments, she walked over to the corner.  After bundling up the comforter in her trembling arms, she walked to the bed, laid down, covered herself up with the blanket and fell into a much needed sleep where she dreamt of happier times.