residue

“Noun, a small amount of something that remains after the main part has gone or been taken or used”

Everything leaves something behind. The cake pan yawns open as I remove the cake, glistening with a silky, oily film. I toss the pan in the sink with a great, satisfying crash, and I don’t give it another thought.

But once the cake is cooled, frosted, decorated, topped with candles, gobbled up and gone, I stand over the sink with sponge in hand, suds collecting on the front of my shirt, and I hesitate before wiping the pan clean, maybe because I don’t want to dismiss the last remnant of the thing I’d labored to create. But of course this is silly, and these thoughts occur so far beneath the surface that I barely notice them. With a few swishes of the sponge, the pan is clean.

Later, I clean my room. I dig out a stack of Astronomy magazines, five years worth, at least. I haven't read a single one in years. Most of them I never opened in the first place. I know I should recycle them, but something stops me. My interest in astronomy has slowly faded, along with my knowledge of all the constellations in the northern hemisphere. All that’s left is residue.

I think the reason we have so much trouble letting things go is that we mistake residue for the thing it used to be. We confuse shadows for the things they represent.

I click “send” and then I wait, knowing full well it’ll probably be days before she remembers to respond. And while I wait, my mind wanders. I think of all the times we imagined ourselves seventy years from now, cracking jokes and remembering. I remember the millions of times we said dumb stuff like “best friends forever.” And for a while, we were. We even believed it. But forever leaves a residue, too,

We used to talk for hours. Sometimes we still do. And I realize that sometimes it is so hard to tell the residue from the stuff it used to be. How do you tell?

I wait. And I wonder. Is something there? Or are we just scraping the bottom of the pan, trying to build a cake?