Love Letters to the Objects That Hold Meaning

They sit quietly.

In corners.

On shelves. Inside trinket boxes and drawers you open only when something else has already sent you looking.

They do not call out. They do not judge.

But they keep the weight of memory tucked into their shape.

A perfume bottle, almost empty.

The glass cool in my palm.

One last drop and the scent carries you back to a summer, that emotionally is still warm.

A napkin, folded once, then again.

A dark wine circle fixed into its fabric.

A smudge of lipstick.

A note written in a rush.

A piano that knew every heartbreak before you had the courage to speak it.

An old camera. Blurry photographs of someone you once swore you’d never forget and haven’t.

A dessert photo, date-stamped 2020.

The sweetness captured of a moment too good to be true...

These things, these quiet keepers, never ask to be noticed. They wait in the margins of our life until we stumble across them again.

And when we do, it feels as if they’ve been expecting you.

You look, and you remember: Those weren’t just moments. It wasn’t just a napkin. It wasn’t just a photo. It was you, then.

They are witnesses. Accomplices. Evidence.

They knew you in ways no one else did.

So here’s to the old piano. The half-melted candle. The forgotten photograph from a time that became larger in memory than it ever was in reality.

They have stayed. They have waited.

And sometimes, the memory they return to you is not of who you were…but of who is no longer here.

Do we remember because the past still breathes inside us? Or because some part of us never truly left?

Inspired by some photos I uncovered from 2020 and Diana Ross' elegy to her Old Piano