January 26, 2006:

Her shoes on the beach.

There were good moments.

You stayed for those. You planted them at the front of memory and held to them, codependent, in wish-fulfillment. While the world went to hell, she gloated over your pain, and you boiled in her toxicity.

Shoes on the beach. Truth is, that was one of the bad moments. Bobbing in her poison soup of punishment-by-withdrawal garnished with nonstop egregious insults, where the stream of ugly verbal bile betrayed insides rotted with envy and resentment and spite.

Truth is, looking back on it, you don't remember her anymore.