Purposeless possessions and boxing up the past
On clutter and holding onto the past.
May 16, 2021
I have a little shoebox that I keep under my bed. Once, it was baby pink, but now it is frayed at the edges and the cover has turned parchment yellow. I bought it when I was eleven, and in it, I put the very first love letter I received – a torn piece of notebook paper that said, “I like you even though you accidentally kicked me during P. E. Do you want to sit together in English?”
Over the years, I filled it with things I thought I wanted to keep forever: friendship bracelets from friends I knew I would lose with time, lily petals that have now turned a putrid brown, a ceramic ballerina from a music box that my brother broke as a toddler. These trinkets hold memories of people and places that don’t exist anymore. In the cutting of an artificial rose lies a summer afternoon spent spinning around a water fountain. Scraps of paper hold failed origami cranes and lost hopes of a constructed hinterland.