Heartbreak, bitterness...and tetris.

The pleading didn’t seem to do any good. I might as well have remained silent as she gathered what was left of her belongings; those material possessions which over the years had gradually become part of the everyday visuals in what had since become my home, when previously it was our home. She took the ceramic white horse on top of the television, the one that lifted from its base to reveal a hiding place for loose change. Loose change which we unselfishly shared between us, and added to daily, a joint act, in stubborn denial of any notion of possession or belonging. She also took the terracotta vase on the bathroom window ledge, leaving the dead scarlet roses on top of the pristine white cistern; as if a lasting eulogy to our lost love. I remember how the vase had once fallen and split into two pieces, and how she had skilfully repaired it, strangely enough, using a spoon and a tub of extra-strength wallpaper paste. It’s the little things….

Other things she removed when she left included the ‘Visit Blackpool’ fridge magnet, the oversized floral oven glove, and every third resident of the stained pine compact-disk rack on the living room coffee-table. The rack itself she left behind, on account of my adamant protestations that I had spontaneously purchased it myself in Ikea, during a weekend trip to Edinburgh. The table, however, was hers, a gift from one of her acquaintances in celebration of our engagement; the engagement that remained only as a testament to unfulfilled potential - and broken promise. I’d never found a new resting place for the rack, instead choosing to leave it on the carpet in the middle of the room, requiring me to descend clumsily whenever I reached for an album. The list goes on, the things that left with her are too many in number to list; she took pretty much everything. I didn’t care much. What use is the material when you have little else? I resolved that she could keep all those things, if they made her happy.

Despite this, in a strange pedantic display of jilted bitterness, I was mostly irritated by the fact that she had taken the Gameboy, my Gameboy; that little box of entertainment which provided hours of fun on those bitter winter nights before we could afford a television (back then the ceramic white horse had resided on the table in the hallway, where other couples may have kept their car keys, or the Yellow Pages.) Not owning a television back in the early days didn’t trouble us much, the money we saved on a T.V. license meant that we could afford small luxuries; fancy cheese, proper rock-salt, tiramisu, and the occasional bottle of Argentinean wine to enlighten the evenings spent bettering each other’s high scores on Tetris. That’s how it was at the start, anyway. Eventually she began to spend most evenings elsewhere in pursuit of thrills and excitement; whilst I stayed at home, achieving and beating my own high scores at Tetris. I was strangely content at staying home alone, ensuring the safe downwards passage of the various shaped blocks into a neat line at the bottom of the screen. It became an addiction. A challenge. I didn’t really miss her, or notice she wasn’t present. Absence makes the blocks fall longer.

Each time I achieved a higher score it filled me with a sense of satisfaction that my mundane job couldn’t. Even after we purchased the television I could spend hours rotating the blocks, systematically ensuring they fell into neat horizontal lines, eventually creating an organised tower amidst the chaos of falling forms. Ironic, it was my obsession with watching the blocks fall down that eventually became my own downfall. The only time I could put down the Gameboy was when running to the corner shop for another four-pack of AA batteries; and one day I returned to find she had packed her bags. She told me she was leaving. Game over.

Looking back now, I recall that very moment she left, letting the door bang closed, flush in its rectangular frame; that very rectangular frame which defined it as a door, and not just a stray shape of wood attached to a bronze hinge. Frequent use, too, serves to define a door as what it is, a passageway to somewhere else. What use is a door if nobody uses it? Since she left, I had used the door less and less, until it barely moved at all. The reason for this was simple. My previous relationship with the departed Gameboy meant that I had lost my job; losing my job meant I had no money; and having no money meant that I sold the television. My morning, days and evenings were now spent making Tetris shapes in the repetitive patterns on the carpet, the curtains, and on two identical imaginary screens situated on the back of my closed eyelids.

Part of me wishes she hadn’t left. But how can I be really sure it is her that I miss, and not just the familiar surroundings of the objects that adorned the room, or the addictive music that provided the soundtrack to the hypnotic act of manipulating the shapes on the cold liquid crystal display? I guess I couldn’t.

She had completely cut me off and removed me from her life, disappeared from existence with no mention of her destination, leaving behind anything which I had gifted her in our time together. Including the dress I had bought her; the one with the dull yellow shapes - Rectangles, squares and other boxes; recklessly scattered against a canvas of bright white. I’d only purchased it so that she might see the beauty in the shapes, a failed long shot at empathy. She’d probably erased all thoughts of me from her memory by now, moved on, maybe to a guy called Gary with a silver Ford Escort; or Barry, the sort of guy who winks at you in the office car park, through the electric window of his boring brown Rover. I guess I’m totally forgotten by my betrothed, cast into the past as if yesterday’s newspaper, redundant and unnecessary.

It’s absurdly ironic that only one marker of my existence remains in her life. She tried her hardest to leave behind my every trace. But alas, one little fish had slipped through the net. My highest score - immortalised in the memory of some electronic wizardry, somewhere inside the stolen Gameboy. To further heighten the irony, the agony, I’d inserted her initials when prompted to attribute a name to the score as a skewed gesture of commitment, or a last gasp clutch at the withered straws of lost romance

To my delight, a week or so ago I discovered she had left behind the scissors. Dissecting the dress proved easy work, and the one of the remaining residents in the stained pine compact-disk rack served as the ideal ruler. Whether she had intended to leave behind the extra-strength wallpaper paste, I’ll never know; although what I can confirm is that it was the perfect adhesive. For the final prop in my creation, I’d elected to use the piece of wood that hung in what was once a functioning doorway (only after I had rejected using the void on the wall above the fireplace, the void left by the missing Kandinsky, which I assume she had also taken.). A few hours later and I had finished it, an everlasting masterpiece, my very own arrangement of a Tetris game. The dead scarlet roses wiped away the excess paste, far better than a spoon would in my opinion. I would spend the rest of my mornings, days and evenings sitting on the patterned carpet, finishing the game in my mind; in the hope of one day beating that high score.