I spent the morning cleaning out the room I'd been subletting since April.
Three months in a mining town, four hundred miles from home. My wife stayed behind.
The landlady left a can of paint labeled 'touch-ups' on the shelf. I never used it. Never fixed a thing.
I slid the ring off my chain and held it in my palm. I'd worn it there since I started landscaping—too afraid of losing it in a pile of mulch or a ditch.
But it wasn't about safety. Not really.
I put the ring in an envelope, wrote her name on it, and slid it into my shirt pocket.
It was the only thing I hadn't let go of. The room, the job, the distance—I could carry all that. But the ring was a weight I'd been holding at arm's length.
I left the envelope on the dresser for her to find when she comes to settle accounts.
Letting go isn't one big decision. It's a thousand small ones, like choosing not to put it back around your neck.