The box wasn’t his, so he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.
He stood in front of her closet, fidgeting with the ends of his shirt as he nibbled on the bottom of his lip. It’d been maybe five years since he’d opened this closet, but it’d only been a day since he had last walked into this room.
During the first six months after she left, he had to avoid walking past the room, the smell of her flower-scented perfume burning his lungs with grief and guilt. It took a year for the room to stop feeling like it was still hers. Eventually, it was just another empty room in his house. Now, not only was it empty but bare, except for the cardboard box that stared up at him, taped and ready to be taken. At one point, the box had a definite location, but now it had nowhere to go.
“Are you ready?” His sister, Anya, called. She had offered to help him with the last of his things. “I looked everywhere, I promise there’s nothing left. We have to leave now.”
Anya was worse than him. She pretended as if the room didn’t exist. The only problem was that she pretended for so long eventually it became a reality for her, easily able to overlook it as if it was a pin on the ground. He thinks it’s because Anya hates her, and Anya would rather not remember that she was ever a part of Deene’s life.
The box had the last of her things. She said she would pick them up the day before she left for real. But she never came. She wasn’t able to.
“Deene, are you coming?”
He blinked a couple of times in order to break away from his trance, letting go of his shirt and pushing back his hair, waltzing out the door and into the hallway. “Sorry Anya, I’m feeling nostalgic. You go ahead and leave without me, I’ll just stay here a while longer.”
Anya smiled, looking up at her brother from the bottom of the stairs. She had cut her hair up to her chin a week ago and dyed it blonde, a good look on her. She turned on her heels and picked up the scarf she had left on top of one of the many cardboard boxes, wrapping it around her neck after brushing something off from her jeans. “Okay, you big softie. Call me when you head over. Although I bet you’ll take so long you won’t be able to come.”
The living room was the biggest room in the house, but it appeared to be much smaller as boxes were lined up against the walls. Even though the room had three large windows facing out into the bright city, the room was still dark. It was probably because there were boxes stacked in front of the windows too.
Deene waved at his sister before returning to the room, sitting in front of the box he’d forgotten about. He never knew what was inside of it, after all, he didn’t pack it. She did.
Open it, his mind insisted. Maybe you could sell whatever’s inside. Three years ago, the thought would have been preposterous. He would have scolded himself for even thinking about getting rid of her things, never mind selling them. And yet, here he was, pulling the box closer to him with curiosity, scratching at the tape in hope that he wouldn’t need scissors to open it.
Perhaps it was some of her clothes. It was in her closet, after all. Or maybe it was all room decor. Maybe it was her notebooks, all filled with epiphanies and reminders. She was clever, but always forgetful.
The tape wouldn’t budge so he got up, walking downstairs to look for a pair of scissors. As he walked, he tried to picture her room, remembering what was inside in order to keep up his guessing game.
She liked to pile things up in the corner; there were loose papers and random objects scattered everywhere. Maybe the box had some of these things. Once he got a hold of the scissors, a terrifying thought haunted him.
Maybe it was things he’d gotten for her. She was good at remembering who got her what, since she treasured any gifts given to her, even if she didn’t especially like it. She’d also be petty enough to separate everything he’d given to her, in order to take it and burn it, sell it, or plainly give it away to whoever was willing to carry someone else’s memories. He bet that’s what she would have done if she was able to get her things. But she wasn’t able to make it that day.
It’d make sense if it were things he’d given her. After all, it was the only box left. If it were anything important, like her speakers or her textbooks, she would have done everything in her power to fit it into the trunk of her beatdown car in order to make sure it really made it to her new apartment. Deene only saw it once, and it was after the day she didn’t come. He remembered the heaviness in his chest as he examined the hideous apartment. It was obvious she wasn’t ever really planning on living in it, she just wanted to have a place to hold her stuff before she was gone for good because she’d never be okay with knowing she’d left it all in his house. Deene didn’t know why he was so sure of this, but he was.
He returned to the room with the scissors, suddenly hesitant about opening it. He’d finally moved on from her, it took him almost three years. It took him one more year to be able to move out without feeling as though leaving this place meant leaving everything about her as well. He knows now that this isn’t the case, and that he’s moving out because the place was no longer home; it was an apartment too large for someone living alone.
The tape was finally off. Deene hadn’t even noticed himself cutting it. He gripped at the flaps of the box, creating suspense for no one but himself. He had to make a final decision as to what he thought was inside the box, just for the fun of it.
“It’s random stuff you didn’t know what to do with,” he guessed. “Because it’s the only thing you’d be okay with leaving behind in case you decided not to come back and get it after all.” Then, he threw the flaps open.
A CD of the first concert they went to together. The dream catcher that used to hang over their bed. The jacket he’d let her keep the second time they’d met because she’d forgotten it was going to rain later that day. Pamphlets for trips they went on. The broken calculator Deene had thrown to the ground during their first fight. Wrapping paper they’d bought for their first Christmas together. Shells they’d collected together when they went to a beach. The paper in which he’d written his phone number on, and finally a framed picture of her grinning in front of the apartment building, pointing up. Deene was at her side, his arms wrapped around her waist with the same excitement in his eyes. It was the day they moved in.
He gripped his shirt as he stared into the box, his eyes burning, and his mind racing. She had taken everything she owned and left it in a disgusting apartment she never planned to live in. At the time, he’d thought she was leaving him because she was tired of him or because she hated him, but he knows better now. She made sure not to leave anything behind because she loved him, and didn’t want him to suffer any more than she knew he would the day she left. She didn’t want to burden him with having to figure out what to do with her things once she was gone. But these weren’t her things, no, it was their things. Things she couldn’t decide the fate of, because they weren’t only hers. They didn’t belong with her other boxes, but now they also don’t belong with his. This was their box, a box both of them should have decided the fate of.
And now they never will.
Copyright © 2022 Ilhy Gómez Del Campo Rojas. All rights reserved.
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