My boyfriend's earring belonged to his ex who took his virginity and aborted his baby. She meant a lot to him, so I don’t mind that he can’t part with it. It is a cheap crystal, zirconium or whatever fuckass space word they call a fake diamond.

It is pretty, but I don’t want to wear it. Not when it is only the one earring. Whenever he suggests I wear it, I ask him where the earring’s sister is and he goes off like he is searching but returns naked or with a beer.

I do go into cheap jewelry stores sometimes looking for a pair of dopplegangers, but nothing looks quite right. I think of buying a pair and replacing the lone earring with one from the pair , and pretending I found his earring’s doppleganger. But I fear he will know. The psychic link he has to the thing will make it easy for him to see the deception.

The earring is the most I have ever seen of my predecessor. There are no other signs of her here. What was she like that he had to keep one little piece of her and that it had to be something that he could give to her successors? This earring was a graft. If I were to wear it, I would become her. Who would I become?

Did she leave it or did he steal it? I guess it’s theft if he’s kept it knowingly. I wonder where she is and if I should try to give it to her so I won’t have to worry about it anymore. But then I think that once I see all of her, I will start to compare myself to her and feel inferior. It’s easy to feel superior to a fragment.