You know I want to be a director, but you could never truly see the movies in my head and that, Ed, is why we broke up. I don't love you anymore, of course I don't, but still there's something I can show you. I know you can't see it, not you, Ed, but maybe if I tell you the whole plot you'll understand it this once, because even now I want you to see it.

I loved you and now here's back your stuff, out of my life like you belong, is the smile. It's the time at the end, when she finally has the envelope with the photographs and burns it unopened in the gorgeous ashtray and she knows it's over and lights a cigarette and stands in that perfect green of a dress watching the blackbirds swarm and flurry around the church spire. Once is when the kingpin who killed her father gets thrown off the building, which is not the time I'm thinking of. She plays an assassin and dress designer, and she only smiles twice in the whole film. Lately I've been like Aimeé Rondelé in The Sky Cries Too, a movie, French, you haven't seen. The thunk, I admit it, will make me smile. I'm dumping this box on your porch, Ed, but it is you, Ed, who is getting dumped. I'm dumping the whole box back into your life, Ed, every item of you and me. Every last souvenir of the love we had, the prizes and the debris of this relationship, like the glitter in the gutter when the parade has passed, all the everything and whatnot kicked to the curb. So it all went into the box and the box went into my closet with some shoes on top of it I never wear. Plus I thought my mom would find some of the things, because she's a snoop for my secrets. I found it down in the basement, just grabbed the box when all of our things were too much for my bed stand drawer. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much. I'm writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. But it's December now, and the sky is bright, and it's clear to me. Not the right day for this, not for us, who went out when it rains, from October 5 until November 12. The sort of day when you think everything will be all right, etc. You won't even know why it even happened. You won't even know or hear what's being dumped at your door. You should be taking a shower, but you're heartbroken on the bed, I hope, so it's your sister, Joan, who will open the door even though the thunk's for you. You're upstairs probably, sweaty and alone. I can see her frown in the reflection of the bubbly sauce or whatnot. She will look down in her saucepan, worried that if she goes to see what it is it'll boil over. It'll rattle the hinges a bit when it lands, because it's so weighty and important, a little jangle along with the thunk, and Joan will look up from whatever she's cooking.

Why we broke up novel