I Kept Her Playlist

We broke up two years ago and I still listen to her playlist.

Not on purpose. That is the confession, really — it is not a shrine, it is a leak. When we were together she made one of those endless collaborative playlists, the kind you both add to for months without discussing it, and when we split I meant to delete it and instead I just… didn't.

Now it is stitched into everything. The algorithm learned us as a unit. It thinks her taste is my taste. So a song she loved will surface between two of mine, uninvited, and for three minutes I am back in a specific car on a specific bridge with the windows down.

I have tried. I built a clean playlist, no ghosts, only songs from after. I lasted about a week. The new one felt like a rented flat with white walls — technically mine, nothing of me in it.

She is happy now. I know because we have the kind of friends who tell you things while pretending they weren't going to. I am happy too, mostly, in the ordinary way where you have to be reminded.

But last week her wedding song came on — I didn't even know she had one until the friends did their thing — and I sat in the office car park until it finished. Then I went inside and had a completely normal Tuesday.

I am not going to delete it. I have decided that is allowed. Some people keep a jumper. I keep forty minutes of songs that still know my name.