In Boxes

I've been doing a lot of doing recently - catching up with old friends, cooking decent dishes, and cleaning my room. It's healthy. At least it feels that way. But sometimes I feel like I'm aimlessly pacing in the path between two forks in the road, like a lone ant who's lost sight of the rest of the colony.

While I was cleaning my room last week I found your box. I know you have one for me too. Though, you've probably combined its contents with a bigger box of distant, less-important memories. I'll do the same soon. Mine is packed with old notes, wrinkled photos with bent corners, and cute knick-knacks. The relics, now stained with a yellow tint from the oxygen rich air, tell stories and hold secrets written in a language that only we could understand.

I wonder what's in yours now? I've seen it before - it's a folder, actually.  You showed me on a rainy day we decided to stay in. You were wearing a red and black mohair-blended sweater that contrasted your pink pastel walls. As we took a peek inside and joked about our juvenility, hot porridge and freshly brewed coffee permeated the room like incense. Though I don't remember exactly what was inside, a blissful sweet scent is stitched into the fabric of my brain like a patch on a familiar looking quilt. 

The other day I was talking about these dumb boxes and folders with a good friend of mine. She reopened her's not too long ago and among the clutter of artifacts was an old tattered brown leaf. The kind of leaf you would find resting on your doorstep on a breezy fall morning. She was sure there was a story written in its tiny cracks, but the words were faded and the memory escaped her.