Love Letters to the Objects That Hold Meaning

By someone who knows that not everything worth remembering is loud.

They sit quietly.

In corners. On shelves. In trinket boxes and in drawers you only open ever so often.

They don't speak, they just hold onto memories for you.

A perfume bottle with the very last drop of a summer's vacation.

A napkin with a wine ring, lipstick smudges and a note.

A piano that once heard every heartbreak before you admitted it out loud.

An old camera with blurry photos of someone you swore you'd never forget.

A dessert photo, timestamped 2020, that surfaces just after I've been locked out of everything else.

These objects, souvenirs of the unspoken, don't ever ask for attention.

They don't knock. They don't call.

They just wait, holding meaning and memories in the fold of their silence.

And when you find them again, it's as if they've been expecting you.

You look at them and think:

That wasn't just a moment or a napkin or a photo. That was me, then.

And somehow, me, now.

They are our memory-keepers. Our accomplices. Evidence

The things that witnessed us in a time and space that no one else did.

Love letters, written back to us in texture, in echo, in scent.

So here's to the old piano.

The half-melted candle.

The forgotten photo from a time that came to mean more than it should have.

They've never left.

They just waited for me to remember.

And sometimes, memory doesn’t return just to remind us of who we were...

But of who we lost along the way.

Do we remember because the past still lives within 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