You were a stuffed rabbit with gangly limbs and a black nose smooth as silk. You were a gift, an Easter present from eons past, from a life much, much simpler, I believe. You had a twin I preferred – bright green and yellow to your gloomy purples. You were what I ended up with, second best, much to my chagrin, but I promised to love you forever anyway. You might have had a name once – many names. I'd crown you only to forget and strip you of your titles, bestow upon you new ones and forget again, over and over, ad nauseam, until one day I forgot to name you at all, then the next, and the next, and suddenly you were an undignified peasant in a wasteland of smooth linen sheets and cotton-stuffed pillows.

You weren't the first of your kind, nor the last, but from among the rubble and the piled bodies waiting to be discarded, I remembered you had a twin, and I reached out and reclaimed you unto the end, this so-called promise of forever. And now – now you sit at the foot of my bed, stuffed into a corner, forgotten, until I blindly, on rare nights, grope around to find you.

You are old and gray and full of sleep, a bag of rags I offer half a thought to when I see your once-silk-smooth nose, now frayed and tattered threads. You had a twin once, given to someone I once thought the world of and now don't think of at all. You are like her, a relic of the past, the manifestation of my inability to lay it to rest, my stuttering attempts to hold on and let go all at once.