loss and aura

Freud, melancholy, to each item a memory. They are our artifacts to which we’ve placed auras. When someone dies we touch them and a single memory is released: it need not seem important: I stood in the basement staring at a pile of broken boxes a month after you left. I’d see you again in a few days but that didn’t seem to matter. There was a lonely month on one end and it made me feel very far away—there were years after all, during which you were years away and I sat and I read quietly and waited for you because that’s what I thought you would do. We are always thinking alike. Me in my room you yours years away. Me wishing I could pare down the language like [x] you wishing you didn’t have to. Then I set the object down feeling some indefinite time had passed and the memory was still there but cold now. They need only be warm while you’re around. For friends I keep a memory hot plate. Touch, dim, aura, dim—like some abandoned philosopheme the French forgot about and leaped upon it like they were just now discovering it for the first time, after having mocked us for our earnest efforts to produce it. Touch, dim, aura.