Listening to a conversation the other day I heard someone use the phrase “my ex”. They were referring of course to someone they were once married to.

The concept of applying a possessive label, a word used to describe belonging alongside something you describe as being previous, being lost, being ‘ex’, struck me as odd.

I no longer have this, it is ‘ex’, but it belongs to me, it is mine.

I no longer have a spouse and so the replacement label for that loss is what I will own instead. It’s as if we wear the label of having lost it with pride.

Yoonjin “Zoonzin” Lee, who took the photo on this post, gives a voice to small found objects with his blog – What small objects think when you forget them on the street. What a fab idea.