Erin Cullinane
Unread Subscription

It’s been months since he asked me to leave, and almost as long since I eventually left. That being said, I still haven’t found the time to tend to the matter of updating my address. Instead of formally redirecting my mail, I’ve been overly busy thinking about the issues that need to be tended to—the ones that go unread.

What does he do with them week after week? As he walks upstairs from the mailbox, does he glance at the cover art and thumb through the unread pages? I imagine he places the latest issue neatly on the pile, a pile especially allocated for my unclaimed mail—a pile that as it stacks up, makes him increasingly heavyhearted. Does he occasionally take a back issue to read on the subway? Maybe he goes as far to peel off the label that displays my name with his address and claim the subscription as his own. And if so, perhaps he holds it the same way I did: rolled into a third, reading cover to cover over a series of journeys, one column at a time. He’s probably been busy, though, and only has had time to read the “Current Cinema” section here and there. Even so, he might have taken the time to read my favorite writer’s piece in the December 1st issue because he would like to discuss it with me at a later date.

Or perhaps he will discuss it with another girl, a girl he’s trying to impress with my literary knowledge, a girl who says she has heard of the author, but has yet to read any of said author’s work. Is this the girl with which he now shares our bed on Sunday mornings? Who now gets to rest her head upon his shoulder, nestled against his chest? Her loose perfect curls probably fall softly on one of my old pillowcases and move only ever so slightly when she laughs endearingly at his reading aloud of that issue’s particularly humorous piece in “Shouts & Murmurs.”

Although more than likely, he doesn’t bother to take any of them upstairs at all. Instead, he simply locks the mailbox and discards of them, unread, on the cracked lobby tiles, without giving the past issues a second thought. He probably leaves them scattered amongst locksmith cards and letters of final notice addressed to the other previous, forgotten tenants.