not a synecdoche for the thing, but the thing itself: May. 17, 2011 (11:22 am)

i broke it off with the first man who tried to date me after i had broken it off with d. by telling him that i wasn't ready to see a new toothbrush in my medicine cabinet. he had studied economics so i had to explicate my own sentence, "the toothbrush is a synecdoche for the relationship," and then probably needed to explain further that a synecdoche is a part that stands for a whole. despite all the red wine we've drunk and all the almonds we've eaten in the past seven months, m., fearful of the same innocuous objects i've been fearing, never asked for a toothbrush. the boxes are piling up and my move to the midwest is a physical presence in the apartment. m. told me that i'll have a boyfriend within a month of moving to bloomington; i retorted that he'd start sleeping with someone new the second i left. "maybe when i was younger," he said, "but i can't move that quickly anymore." m. gave me nothing so there is nothing from m. to take with me. still, there's a way of talking i'll notice is gone whenever it is that i have a new man in my new bed in a new city.

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