the pen that signed my first goodbye

She was a cheap blue Bic, the kind you buy in a pack of twelve from the newsagency round the corner from my Adelaide flat. I remember the cost because she was seventy-eight cents, and I had only a two-dollar coin left after a flat white that morning. She sat in a cracked mug on the kitchen bench, and I pulled her out hours later, shaking, when the words inside me refused to leave quietly.

There is something almost embarrassing about the earnestness of a first heartbreak letter. You sit at the laminate desk inherited from your older sister and tell yourself you are being dignified. You are not. You are twenty-two, the red galahs outside screeching at the bin, and you are pouring your chest out with a plastic pen never meant to carry anything heavier than a grocery list. I have written about this pen before, but never quite this honestly.

a seventy-eight cent bic from a small street near the market

The newsagency sits on a busy street near the Adelaide Central Market, the kind where the owner still remembers what chocolate you bought as a kid. I ducked in for a stamp and walked out with twelve pens, some Tim Tams, and a quick chat about the Crows' chances. She was the third pen from the left, lid cracked, the blue line on the side smudged by another thumbprint. She was not special. She was simply the one I happened to pull out, which is often how the most important objects arrive.

I do not think he ever bought a pen in his life, and that was one of the tiny reasons I knew we were coming to an end. We were two years into renting a peaches-coloured flat, and the entire writing life of our kitchen rested on me.

the night she earned her spot in the mug

By the time I sat down, the arvo had melted into something darker, and the neighbour's cattle dog had stopped barking. I had boiled the kettle twice and let it go cold both times. I had reread three old text messages I should not have reread. The pen sat in the mug with two of her sisters, leaning against a dried-out highlighter, and I chose her because she matched the colour of the bruises I was trying to describe. That sounds more poetic than it felt. In reality, it was the pen closest to my hand.

I had drafted the letter twice in my head, both too clever by half, both referencing inside jokes he would not remember, both mentioning The Jezabels, the band of our first year. In the end, I crossed most of it out. What remained was four sides of A4 in my ungainly hand, no capitals where capitals should have been, the ink pressed so heavily in places that the words bled into one long smudge.

the smudged hand and the spilt ink

The first line took the longest. I wrote hello, then crossed it out. I wrote dear M, then left the space empty for what felt like an hour. The pen bled every time I paused, leaving tiny pools where the ink dried mid-thought. By the second page my left hand was streaked blue, by the third my right finger had a dark ring around it. The desk kept a small ink splatter I never managed to lift, and I was grateful for it later, because it was the only proof in the flat that the letter had ever existed.

I did not cry while I wrote. I cried after, in the bathroom, with the tap running so the neighbours could not hear. Then I washed my face, blew my nose into a tea towel I no longer own, and went back to rewrite two sentences I had rushed through. The second draft was almost identical to the first. That is how you know the first draft was true.

what the letter actually said

It did not say I hate you, although I wanted it to. It did not say come back, although I meant it. It said the things that are harder to write than hate: thank you for the year we had, I am sorry I could not be steadier, please look after yourself, and goodbye. I signed it with the full version of my name, the one only he ever used, and I underlined it twice, a detail that still mortifies me twenty years on.

In the bottom corner, before I folded the pages, I drew a tiny blue wattle sprig in the margin. I do not know why. I think I wanted him to carry a piece of where he grew up, even as I was the one throwing it away. The wattle was smaller than my smallest fingernail, drawn in the same blue ink, and I have thought about that tiny leaf more than I have thought about the goodbye.

the post office on rundle street with its green awning

The next morning I walked the letter down to the post office, the one with the green awning that is now a cycle shop, and bought a stamp from a woman who asked if I wanted the receipt. I did not. I wanted even a stranger at a counter to see I was trying to be brave. I dropped the letter in with the bills, and the man behind me in the queue said g'day as if nothing in the world was happening. I said g'day back.

Then I bought a meat pie from the corner bakery that I did not finish, and walked home pretending I was over him. I threw out his toothbrush, swapped every Jezabels song for Meg Mac and Paul Kelly. Both jobs were easier than the letter had been.

why she still lives in the mug by the window

I still have that pen. She is dried out completely, the kind of dry no scribbling will fix. She lives with two surviving sisters and a pink shell from Glenelg beach, the summer before I moved north. They sit in the blue chipped mug he gave me as a joke, the one printed WORLD'S OKAYEST GIRLFRIEND. They are witnesses to a version of me who needed to say something out loud, even if only on paper.

I logged her once in my private records under heartbreak objects, and the entry still reads blue bic, kitchen bench, no caps where caps should be, wattle in the corner. Sometimes I look at her and feel sorry for the girl who picked her up. Mostly I am just proud the girl finished the letter at all.

If you want to read the quieter side of this story, the love poems and the small obsessions, find them on the reading list. Pull up a seat at the bench with me, leave your own heartbreak objects down in the comments, and if you have been carrying a story around for years, send it over to the submissions inbox. The kettle is always on and the mug always has room for one more.