Storage

There is a piled-high-to-the-ceiling storage locker in the Detroit suburbs where I’ve locked up the things I know from our marriage but no longer need. Old bourbon boxes, Sterilite tubs of all sizes, bursting shopping bags hold it all. It’s not the expired half-box of tapioca or those other brown paper bags he gave me from the trunk of our Prius with junk mail, chipped bowls he never liked, and an old unopened jar of tahini. I used to seek his favorite dark chocolate and raspberry combinations, drive to Michigan every summer, and remember the birthdays and anniversaries of people who don’t speak to me anymore.

What I longed for then repels me now, but I can still get a jolt of pain sometimes, a sudden paper cut or splinter unexpectedly as I unpack it all. I wish I could at least sell some of it at a yard sale or in a consignment shop – to have it be worth something. I know his shoe size, that he doesn’t like salmon, potatoes or too much black pepper, that he reads social theory on vacation, and that he can’t nap. It’s not like I want to put the info in a shiny gift box to give to his next lover. It’s more like I want it all to have some lasting value – like childhood scars that are still visible on adult skin – a topography delineating why/how/who I am.