Dust must have something sad in it. It is dead skin, after all. The fact that it settles primarily on old belongings that we used to interact with, used to laugh and cry around; objects that have the keen ability to throw you back to an exact spot in time that had been tucked farther in your mind than you knew was possible. Our dead skin coats these memories and when we take them out years later and wipe off the dust the objects themselves and memories they hold are both more beautiful and often more terrible than we could have remembered.

Sorting through boxes recently I found a crumpled spider body sprawled atop my Margaret Henry horse books. In another sat a dust covered box full of folded boxes from Christmas past. These boxes only existed to have their tape popped at 7am Christmas morning, lids cast aside never again to find their rightful bottom counterparts, and live another year in the dark with the other box parts to submit to the same callous fate the next year.

Another small pink box held dozens of dried rose petals in separate, labeled zip lock baggies that carried a haunting scent.

I opened the lid to a teal, flowered picture box and a skeletal catnip fish lay on top. Intended for the cat  that I shared in a time-bomb, medium distance relationship, she was returned by the party she lived with to the animal shelter before I could say goodbye, much less give her the toy. Originally for confirmation that she had found a good home and wasn’t still “in the system” I let a year or two go by and searched for her on Pet Finder. Page one, same name, easily distinguishable by the overgrowth of toes on her front and back paws she looked back at the camera in a non expectant way. I pick her up in a month when I move to my new apartment.

I lifted the catnip fish from the box to toss on a pile of little toys I had already purchased for her since confirmation of our impending reunion and noticed that underneath it was a tiny paw print clay impression belonging to another small kitten, stinging a different part of me, inclining me to leave the toy in the box.

The photo box seemed bottomless, managing to encompass the scope of my car accident in an empty Vicodin bottle, a receipt from the last tank of gas I put in the Corolla, a CD with blood splatter on it and a business card from Nelson Family Dentistry for the June 20 dentist appointment that I never made it to. Things a family might keep of a loved one who has died to remember them by, except this is my box.

But I do see the bottom of the box, and resting there is a photocopied note signed “Anyways, Love Ya,” from my graduation open house signature book and a picture taken one year later. There is a wink face in the paragraph and he is looking at me in the photo. Somewhere in the box I know there is a chunk out of his orange and red tail lights. No dust has collected on any of this.

For reasons unseen, I put the lids back on each of these strange boxes and restore them to their places. I might frame that picture someday, or throw out the CD and the flowers. Or open everything back up in a year, brush off the fresh layer of dust that has settled on the boxes; on how I feel about the objects inside of them and reflect on the reality of their existence with eyes that have seen more than mine have a this point.

Luciana, 25