Woe to any man who might seek my courtship;

I will always desire to taste whatever you order at dinner, and I will also steal your socks. These are two undeniable truths.

In sincerity and full disclosure,

your future girlfriend.

As she cleaned his kitchen for the last time she realized how many of the spice containers were empty; no more salt, no more Cholula. How the avocado had become rotten as it sat ignored; its skin tough and fragile all at once, guarded and seeping. His caked coffee grounds in the sink had served their purpose and so had she. How many times had these dishes been done by her, as she passed the time by doing one more thing so that he would have one less thing to do while he sat ten feet away or less sometimes but always with a wall around himself as she waited, and waited, just for him to speak to her, even. Just something, anything that used to be there.

She couldn’t remember the last time they had fucked and isn’t it funny how you never know it’s the last time and how had it come to be this way when he used to want her so much, her skirt pulled up over her hips and her thinking of him in ways that made her blush even when they were miles apart, even as recently as last week she had wanted him and nothing mattered but the way she could move with him and open up to him, and she had always kept some things back as a surprise. Skills. She had still wanted him and wanted him still. His hostility and his fear and his cold winter apathy toward her for months had been a waste of what could have been rough sex; he could have taken it out on me that way and I wouldn’t have minded passed through her and then she felt ashamed to think that because what she really wanted was just for him to hold her and be good to her and be tender with her, and for him to remember that making her laugh was something he was always good at and he had stopped trying and that instead of pushing her to a place of pain and disbelief and distrust and bitterness he could have just said I’m afraid of this but I know I love you anyway and I won’t leave you again, or at least not until we’ve laughed as much as we can and come as much as we can and cooked dinner together and I want to spend more Saturdays doing nothing with you but he never said any of that. Threw her away instead.

She carried the bag of moldy lemons to the trash and one fell and split open on the hardwood, a seed scattering to a place he would eventually sweep up along with some of her stray hair, and she recalled how once when he left her in California she had found a lemon seed dried and stuck to his orange towel and she had carried the towel to the beach, to the spot they used to sit and drink their coffee together, and she had left the towel with the lemon seed in that place because everything else in the house was already packed and she couldn’t bear to bring that ocean- and sun-scented rag of memory with her. That was close to two years ago and over a thousand miles away and she hadn’t given up, not until now. The anger she feels is foreign to her body and all she can do is clean his kitchen one last time and take out the trash and be rid of everything wasted in four years of time and love and hope and uneaten fruits and vegetables.