Butterflies in November

SIXTEEN

I don’t get my ex. He’s just moved out with most of the contents of the house when he’s back again. Always forgetting something, that’s the third toothbrush he is collecting, and he even takes mine, which I’d just removed from its wrapping and used maybe once. I keep on buying new ones so that he can come and swipe them, along with a book on the mating of insects and other trifles.

But I don’t quite get why he needs to take a shower on every visit. As he is washing himself he slips on our song, loud enough for him to be able to hear it under the jet of water.

As if it were the most natural thing in the world, my ex strolls around the apartment with, at most, a small towel wrapped around his waist that just about covers his crotch or backside, but not both at once. As can be expected from a man in his comfortable position in life, I notice a slight accumulation of flab in the mid-section of his body.

He opens all the cupboards in his journey around the apartment, as if he were checking them for new signs of life. The fact is that most of them are empty, because thankfully he has removed almost everything that was in them. There is actually very little left of him, apart from the black hairs he leaves behind in the shower. By the next time he comes to pick up a toothbrush, I will have unclogged the drain. The question I am confronted with is this: for how long should deserting husbands be allowed to come back to take showers? What if he carries on like this, long into his new relationship? How would I explain these endless repeated clogs of hair in my shower to a new potential partner with perhaps a hairless chest?