When life gives you Citrus Twist

I was puttering around a few weeks ago like I often do on Saturdays, doing various household tasks, when someone knocked on my door. I was surprised to find a young woman with several large bags of groceries on my doorstep. I told her I wasn't expecting anything and tried to send her away, but she insisted it was the right address, holding out her device so I could see. It was definitely my address, but the wrong name. "This isn't mine," I told her again, "that's my ex." As she nudged the bags closer to my house, I could see from her expression that she thought she had stumbled into a romantic attempt at reconciliation. At a loss for what else to do, I hauled the heavy bags inside the house. While the cats began their initial inspection, I considered the situation. Despite the fact that I don't respond at all, well beyond the point where a sane person would have given up, my ex does still frequently try to get my attention, texting everything from requests for help to messages filled with insults and threats, all of it similarly lacking in punctuation and riddled with misspelling. So I wondered, could these groceries have been sent here intentionally, as a way of forcing me to interact? Or were they an attempt to bribe me, to curry favor, pun not intended. The cats were becoming more active in their inspection, climbing into the bags, so I decided to see what was in them. In one I found doritos, frozen burritos, frozen pizzas, hot sauce, ground meat, all things I never buy. In the other, three giant bottles of Citrus Twist soda, equally useless. Although I would rather not ever see them again, groceries are expensive so I stuff the food into my freezer, my vegetarian self flinching at being in proximity to meat. I figure maybe they can come get them from out front, since my house is hidden enough that I could leave the bags out there and go somewhere else. I wait for them to realize what has happened and sure enough the texts start. I break my silence to respond, "yes, your groceries are here," and expect them to tell me they are coming. Instead they demand that I put the groceries in a car service and send them all the way to the other side of Brooklyn, a $50 ride I can't pay for. I refuse, and go back to ignoring the avalanche of messages this has triggered. Days go by, the texts slow, and the content moves on to other things. At first I wonder when they are going to come get the food, and then if they are going to come get it, but I am not going to break my silence to ask. At first I feel a little bit bad that they don't have their food, but then I remember this is a person who stole from me, punched me in the face, put their hands around my throat and squeezed until I thought, "this is how women die." Weeks pass, the stuff is in the way. So I pick up one of the giant bottles of Citrus Twist, put it in a bag, bring it to the office and stick it in the fridge in the library, where our HIV+ support group meets. I text the facilitator, "I put some soda in the fridge that your group can have" and just like I removed the ex's tightly wound tendrils from my life, one by one, I start removing the unwanted groceries from my house, item by item.