Somewhere faraway and forgotten

I never thought you would remember me. I thought you would erase me from your memory, as the house you lived in for 30 years is now stamped with “Auctioning.”I have always been stuck at the back of your mind—in a tranquil, sun-bleached hinterland where tumbleweeds roll and memories doze in the heat. I live far beyond the suburbs of important dates and phone numbers. Occasionally, a note to check the oven or a stray thought—like wondering what happened to that one kid in third grade—floats by my window.

My kingdom is next to the leak that stained the plywood and under the nest of brittle, old Christmas lights. I was a simple, slightly crumpled banker’s box, the kind you bought in a four-pack during your first big move. The day you decided to move was the day you remembered. However, you did not start with the hope of a voyage of discovery. You were annoyed. The realtors said the attic had to be “staged,” which meant it had to be empty. You are sweaty, your hair stuck to your forehead, and hoping last year’s missing pie wasn’t in here.

You folded down the attic stairs, which will break any minute, and poked your head up to see the situation. You eyed dirty things like me with utter distaste. A heavy-duty black rubbish bag, hungry and gaping, appears in your hand. You began to stuff it, a ruthless archaeologist working in reverse, burying history for good. Old lamps, broken fans, and bundles of yellowed newspapers —all vanished into the plastic void without a glance. Then, your darting eyes spot me, and my adrenaline tries to pop my poking veins. But then your eyes brushed past as quickly as they came, unbothered by my pleas. A look of pause spread on your face, and then turned back at me. You walked over and reached out to me. I stared in awe as your hands reached beyond me.

“There was that pie! UGH! it had begun to decay and mold!” Cleaning up the mess, you turned back, but your arm knocked the splintered shelf I was on, and I wobbled, and before you could catch me, I fell. But you did catch something - At my side, words written in ghostly grey sharpie. The nostalgic swirly letters that joined the ‘S’ and the ‘f’. A mother’s hand. Your new Gucci jeans met the ankle-deep dust of decades as you knelt, carefully lifting my crusty lid. From the depths of your memory, I began to rise. You no longer cared about the dancing dust or the strange scent. I was no longer just a cardboard box. I was a time capsule, a cryptex of your former self.

Your fingers, now tentative, brushed aside a layer of tissue paper as fine as moth wings. Every photograph sparked a flame inside. Their colors faded to sepia and mint, and their edges crimped. As you lifted one, a picture of a long-demolished pier with your childhood self laughing, gap-toothed, a tiny piece of the emulsion flaked off, crumbling at your touch like sacred ash. You had the searing pain of a sunburn on your shoulders, but you were still at the beach, grinning. Touching your shoulders, you remembered the pain of the cream against the red patches. You delved deeper. Here was the map I spoke of—not of treasure islands, but of your own lost interior. A folded, crumbling road map of a county you once drove through with a bestie, corners marked with tiny hearts in blue ballpoint pen. Ticket stubs for a film you saw three times, the title now obscure. A bundle of letters, the paper crisp and threatening to tear along the folds, bound with a faded hair ribbon. A single, childish ceramic mug bearing the ghost of a painted sunflower, wrapped in a newsprint dated 1994.

I became the key to the chest you’d forgotten to discover on your map, looted with more exciting adventures—the career leaps, international trips, and shiny acquisitions that filled your life. This was a different kind of loot, richer and more mysterious than the other. It was the loot of feelings. The postcard from a friend who later drifted away, bearing the simple, devastating line, “Wish you were here.” A dried corsage from a school dance, its petals the color of dried blood.

I am the memories you had long forgotten, my corners tucked away neatly like a baby’s swaddle in the very back of your brain, and I watch their traffic from a distance, a silent spectator to the present. I am the edge of your lips, the tangible shape of a thought that formed and then dissolved a second ago, vanished as if it were stolen. I am the name of that teacher, the title of that book, and the lyrics to that song. I am fading. I cannot last. The acids in the paper are eating themselves, the inks are bleaching in the dark, and the fabrics are returning to the earth. With every flake that falls, I diminish, hold onto me now, with a tenderness you did not expect to feel today. You will repack me with care, placing the crumbling photographs in plastic sleeves and the letters in a new folder. I may transition to a cleaner box, in the closet of your daughters, A bedtime story that everyone, including the cat wants to hear.

However, a part of me will always remain with you. As I am also the story from Christmas Eve, when your grandchildren are satiated with sugar and dazzled by tree lights, you will pull out one of these photographs of me. And you will begin, “Did I ever tell you about the summer we spent at that old cottage…?” In that moment, I will no longer be a crumbling box in the attic. I will be the laugh shared over a ridiculous haircut or a cooking attempt gone wrong.

Forever hold onto me in whatever form I take until you cannot. Until your own memories become the attic, and your story becomes the box waiting to be discovered by another, who will kneel in the dust and remember. As I am the far away and forgotten things- the back of your brain, the photographs, and even the moldy pie.