I am sick – sick unto death with this long agony. For the past three weeks I have silently remained an unwilling captive of the medicine cabinet, a forgotten casualty of your cavalier attitude towards relationships. My voice shall be stifled no longer. I address you today with neither sadness nor shame, imploring you to put me out of my misery.

Each morning greets me with the terrifying dread that I may not survive to see the next. You cannot fathom the strain on my psyche. To feel the reaper’s scythe hissingly graze my dewy bristles only to pass me over again and again has brought me to wit’s end. Under even the most favorable of conditions, fear is plentiful for Toothbrushes, but such an existence as which I now suffer is maddening. Why you continue to spare me I do not know, but I care not to remain so fortunate.

The first few days after your girlfriend left you, I thought perhaps there was a chance, albeit slight, that she might return to collect me from amongst the bottles of allergy medication and errant nail clippings. The last time I saw her face, strewn with tears and streaked mascara, my handle rattled with anticipation. She sprung my glamorous friend Nail Polish from this mirrored hell but saw fit to leave me behind. Not unexpected, considering I was but a last-minute drug store pickup on the way home from your one-month anniversary dinner, but nonetheless disappointing. When she slammed shut the hinged gate for the last time I knew my hours were numbered. No man need keep his ex’s Toothbrush once she has gone.

After that moment, I have known only panic and angst. Every time the off-white, halogen energy-saver blasts its sterile wattage through the cracks of my dusty prison, I repent my sins in frightful anticipation. By slivers of light I peer expectantly across my cell for moral support but by now even Toothpaste has abandoned me as lost. Dental Floss cannot bear to face me anymore, top forlornly ajar, leant away from me against the far wall. And so in solitude I suffer, my penance replayed in accursed perpetuity.

No more shall I abide this injustice. While my flesh may remain Medium-Soft, my spirit has hardened. I am unable to commit myself to the tinny hereafter of the trash bin as both my religion and immotility forbid it. You however have the power to end this cycle of torture to which you have unwittingly subjected me since the break-up.

I know you to be a good man with excellent dental hygiene. I beg of you, throw me away.

–Eric Feldman

Photo by eyesontheroad