I have become a deleter. The phone number is removed from the cellphone, not in anger, not to be cruel, but to spare myself the pain of seeing the name, of having to scroll past the person who never calls, of feeling the void of that little line of text. That wonderful series of emails are all torched because I know I will re-read them, feel the place where they started to drop off, get fainter, the cleave starting, and I will grieve all over again. So I delete, delete, delete.

In preparation for Thanksgiving I dig around on the high shelves for things I don’t normally use, spices, devices, nutmeg, springform pans, tucked away for their only occasional use. I am surprised at how much weird foodstuffs I find, things that don’t really belong there. Some of it was clearly for someone else’s taste and I am a little embarrassed it’s there in the first place. If someone looked in my stores, I would be chagrinned at what is still there from some former boyfriend: canned chili; baked beans; tinned tuna; mayonnaise.

Then there are the things that I have that are clearly for making for and with someone else, dreams of intimate evenings of food and talk and love and those cause a different kind of pain. I love to cook for people, to make an offering of pleasure and sustenance, and in my cabinets there is basmati rice, quince paste, polenta, and I am not even sure who I was trying to impress, who I wanted to love me, who I wanted to make love to, with the steel-cut oatmeal, the box is still sealed, pristine.

So this week, a week when I am home from work and have the inclination to cook, I am deleting the failed relationships from my cabinets. By eating them. Tonight: farfalle a la vodka with capers and artichoke hearts. Sorrow can actually be pretty tasty.