I thought I found the mixtape you made me, but it wasn’t it. The last time I saw yours, I was popping it out of cassette player of my ’83 Pontiac Grand Prix in the junkyard. I’d rolled it a few days earlier coming home after visiting you in college.
You were in school, but I wasn’t. I’d missed that semester.
All of my stuff was still in the car when the cop took me away. The accident was just me. I’d been reading your tiny precise writing on the back of the case, neat as a pin, but still uniquely yours. He felt sorry for me and let me off.
I crawled through the wreckage and couldn’t believe my luck that I could still pop out the tape. When I got home, I saw that all I had was the plastic shell. The magnetic tape inside was just gone.