Torn Faces

Torn faces on the floor. Un-seeing eyes stare up at me from glossy fragments of paper and scrap. Stoic lips refuse to speak to me after being relegated to the growing refuse pile in the middle of my bedroom. Those lips will never lie to me again. Those lips will never be able to smile at me, or kiss, or hide their biggest deceit. Reluctantly consigned to a short existence of pure honesty before being swept into the wire can in the corner.
Another loud tear and the count of emerald eyes on the floor increases by two. My cheeks are stained, salty lions racing down the curve of my face in exodus from my sunken oases. After only an hour's worth of work, that face has been stricken from history. Rended from the damaging possibility of future reminiscence.
The pile of half memories strewn on my bed was another story. I still could not bring myself to obliterate a year and a half of my life, but something had to be done. That face may never haunt the cabin in Maine, or go sledding at the park, but there was a chilling absence. An absence that did not make the heart grow fonder, but in fact jabbed at it maliciously with a sharpened toothbrush. I could not destroy those printed memories; but would I ever look at them again?
I steeled myself. The pain was too fresh.  It would take weeks for the scab to flake. For now, I lay awake at night, unable to close my eyes because of a cold void that lay beside and within me. I could not even call my two best friends. One friend I could not call for fear of whose voice would respond; they were both there, I was sure. Not talking about me, of course. Such ideas as that were just paranoia. That I would be such a critical topic in their newly budding relationship that they would cackle and gossip in each other's arms at night, speaking of me. No, I knew that was ridiculous. The other friend, however, I could not call because the alphabet was driving us apart. His name was right next to hers in my cell contact list. I as yet lacked the courage to delete those offensive words that constructed the name of the shreds of homo sapien that lay on the floor from my phone's contact list. The Phoenicians had become the wedge driven between my friend and myself, placing the name I so wished to call adjacent to that which caused my hand to shake.
I sat in silence in my room, these soiled torn representations of life my only companions. My eyes were red and dry, having quietly cried every tear allotted. I set my jaw, my fingers whitening in skeletal fists on my thighs. Staring at the eight-by-eleven space on the wall that did not match the rest.  There, a black and white photo of the two of us at the carnival had once rested. The older couple who had taken the photo had been so eager to help, infected by our own enthusiastic youth. Now that place was infected by he who my parents had referred to as my better half. My heavy eyelids squinted around swollen orbs, glaring at the nail that no longer supported a frame; determined not to let that sorry excuse for a human being ruin my life the way it had ruined our relationship; our "bond," in its words.
I stood, shakily.  Opening my bedroom door and leaving behind the sundered photos. Leaving the year and a half of empty promises behind, resolving to make new memories. I walk out the door, clench a jacket in my thin fingers, and turn left.