The Things We Leave Behind

It's a gray Sunday morning, one best suited to snuggling under the covers in bed with a hot hockey player, but I digress. It's also the last day of my summer. I pick up a magazine on the coffee table, flip through it, put it back, and wander from room to room in the semi-dark. Restless. If I were to leave today and never return what might my small apartment, filled to the brim with clothes, artwork, books, my daughter's toys, say about my life? We are defined by what we do, how we act, what we've accomplished, and what we leave behind.
In my closet is a small travelling bag filled with various items people have left behind, have never returned for, and I suppose now belong to me. Over the last year they have been scattered here and there throughout my space, but last week I decided to gather them up, put them together, try to figure out the puzzle of failed relationships. It would be a challenge.
There is an incredibly soft red sweatshirt left behind by my songwriting crooner. I've never had a man write me a song before, nevertheless so many! There are the polo shirts from Abercrombie & Fitch left behind by my adventure dating boy. They smell like campfires and deep woods off. The Office dvd set and Big Chill soundtrack were left behind by my sensitive rocker boy. Memories of tequila and dancing at 3am in my living room. There is a framed picture of clouds, yes clouds, my artist boy decided while laying on a beach that the clouds were fate speaking to him when they formed the shape of a heart. He took the picture then and gave it to me. A sign, he said. A sign. There is a bottle of hair gel left over by my sweet Portugese drummer boy, and lastly a pair of very sexy boxers left by my hot hockey player.
I sifted through the pile, trying to draw some conclusions...don't date musicians? Guys with big trucks? Artists of any kind? I push the pile back into the bag and back into its corner of my closet without any answers. The things they left behind...small obejects, most likely not missed. And I wonder, where all the things I too have left behind now lie. I would like to believe that there are little altars everywhere. That each of us has our own way of defining who we are by what we have left behind.