Tuesday in CinCity. The U Haul is a Beautiful Thing Edition.
Storage
by Faith Shearin
That year we left the house we couldn't afford and put
our belongings in storage. We were free now
to travel or live in tiny spaces. We kept our chairs
and tables in a cement cell, our bookshelves,
our daughter's old toys, clothes we wouldn't wear
or discard. There were books we liked but did not
need and mattresses and pots and pans. Sometimes
we went to visit our things: sat in our rocking chairs,
searched for a jacket, listened to an old radio. It was like
visiting someone I loved in a hospital: the way, removed
from the world, a person or object becomes thin,
diminished. The furniture on which we lived
our young life had no job but to wait for us.
It remembered our dinners, the light through
our windows, the way the baby once played on the floor.
by Faith Shearin
That year we left the house we couldn't afford and put
our belongings in storage. We were free now
to travel or live in tiny spaces. We kept our chairs
and tables in a cement cell, our bookshelves,
our daughter's old toys, clothes we wouldn't wear
or discard. There were books we liked but did not
need and mattresses and pots and pans. Sometimes
we went to visit our things: sat in our rocking chairs,
searched for a jacket, listened to an old radio. It was like
visiting someone I loved in a hospital: the way, removed
from the world, a person or object becomes thin,
diminished. The furniture on which we lived
our young life had no job but to wait for us.
It remembered our dinners, the light through
our windows, the way the baby once played on the floor.
Hey there, ¡Hola! from Mérida, Yucatán, México where I am living in a tiny place while my belongings wait for me in a central France home, after having waited for me in storage for 4 years to ship them to that belle demeure.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if my library remembers me? Or my desk? Or my clothing and shoes?
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That is so beautiful! It reminds me of how we stored most of my mother's furniture in a unit after her death. My husband and I would go visit, sit in her chair, smell her smells overtaking the concrete cell. It seems like a good way to mark an important passage....
ReplyDeletemy stuff waited for me to come and retrieve it for 3+ years......what a pleasant experience of opening boxes and unpacking things I had not seen for over 1000 days.....makes me appreciate them so much more....smiles
ReplyDelete