someone, using only the objects they left behind

My best friend left a notebook at my house. It wasn't really a diary. Mostly, it was just lists. Places she wanted to visit. Books she wanted to read. Things she wanted to try. I turned the pages expecting to find something interesting. On the last page, there was a list called: “Things I want to do with you.” There were seventeen things. We did six of them. I don't know why, but I counted them twice.

— @burcusn_ozalp · open piece

Her coffee mug, beside a half-read book. A pair of heels by the door. A passport, expired now, softened at the edges from too many stamps. A notebook filled with ideas, lists, and plans that had nowhere to be yet. Lipstick at the bottom of her purse. A Vespa sleeping in the garage, gathering dust and spider webs. Little pieces of the woman she was, before she became Mom. A life that feels both so far away and somehow still mine.

— @venusdeniz · open piece

8 years in life, 3 months in a flat 1 matching tattoo The top of a Tupperware you've took. I cut meat on it now. A black blazer that never suited you. It's sitting in the donation pile for 3 weeks before I throw it out. Your old glasses, your world must have been really blurry. I couldn't see your side. A bag of rotting onions. The last text I sent was about how disgusting it is that you didn't even throw them out.

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I kept them in the cupboard for a month, before I realized you won't apologize.

— @csalan.r.i.g.o · open piece

I’m making my coffee, there’s the mug, remember the one, from that opshop from our home town, and it looks like a literal boob, and makes you laugh when I have a drink from the hole through nipple… Sometimes people come round and laugh at it too and I smile and agree, yeah, it’s a mug that looks like a boob, how silly. Anyway, i’ve got a new mug now, from a friend you haven’t met. It’s a really nice mug- my favourite, it probably wouldn’t make you laugh though.

— @j41m3_3 · open piece

It’s a voicemail I have backed up on my cell phone Saved multiple times over “Hi Emily, I’m doing your taxes..” It was February 19th Your birthday Mom broke the landline answering machine on accident The one that held your voice too So all that holds the exact weight of your tone is now scripture to me Those sacred words about a w-2 And somehow it is the most like you

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Because it was your birthday And you were doing my taxes

— @collectionsby_em · open piece

My grandmother died and left me pierogi. Not in a will in the freezer. She made them for Christmas with the last of her strength, as if feeding us was one more thing death would have to wait for. I couldn’t eat them. I couldn’t throw them away. So they remain, between frozen peas and ice, an absurd little inheritance

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the last thing she made still waiting to be eaten, and me, still not hungry enough to lose her again.

— @spoonily · open piece

82 years on this planet. 56 as my father. You left me a furious longing for your approval. And a box of socks.

— @pastorbrianjones · open piece

sometimes I think if I slip into your space, it’s like your still there. I wear your hoodies instead of mine so when I look up at the hook I can pretend you just went out for a smoke. I drink chocolate milk out of your favorite Batman cup and leave just the tiniest bit on the bottom. So when I walk by in the morning and see it sitting by the sink I can get annoyed at you for not rinsing it, again. I even put your cologne on my neck, and let the passing breeze convince me you just walked by. In my mind I’m always just missing you by a couple seconds, instead of forever.

— @writingwithv · open piece

the distance made it easier, in some ways. we couldn’t all afford to fly over, so I never actually saw you after the end. but when mum flew back to us with a box of your things, me and my sisters chose one knit jumper each. green, blue, red. and when I hugged her, both of us crying, for a moment I was holding you instead. it’s been too long, the jumper smells like me now. I stitched up the fraying sleeve hems with bookbinding thread (I figured you’d appreciate the structural integrity, despite it not being a book). I wear it often enough that sometimes I forget. then I remember all

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over again.

— @natalya.newman · open piece

I didn't get to see him before he left, but I can see where he's been. His pajamas and socks are strewn across the stairs, but my slippers that I kicked off last night, are now neatly arranged by the bottom stair, ready to step right into. He knows how much I hate the feeling of bare feet on cold tiles. His wet footprints skid across the tiles beneath my slippers. I laugh and wonder what he forgot this time. His keys, his wallet? There's a plate with uneaten crusts and scattered crumbs. Next to it, my favourite mug with a fresh tea bag, and a freshly

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boiled jug. An inky post it note barely legible stuck to the fridge, 'Book apt with Dr!' He is a hurricane, his whirlwind thoughts leave a path of chaos. But I know he holds me closer than the chaos, in the eye of the storm, where it is calm. Where he is never too late to think of me.

— @cherieripe · open piece