​Boxes From My Childhood Home

If it were any more silent here, I would swear it were a dream

The stuffy room carries a film as if my eyes were packed in gauze

It smells of nostalgia

Plastics and chemical buildup from a Halloween long past

My costume from when I was 3 is somewhere in these boxes

It feels like a homecoming, though things have changed so greatly

I wear a new costume now, but at the sight of these remnants of past, I am back to crying out for attention

Flailing and fragile

The air tastes of electricity and neglect

I see old books and past school assignments completed with shaky, small hands

Looking through them, I see another version of myself, this one much more curious than I had ever known myself to be

I reside softly in this moment, hoping to appease my great teacher and adversary, Time

These moments are observed through a locked glass door

Viewable but intangible

Like catching thoughts in a glass jar

In the moment, I felt those old wounds as phantom pain

We take in the fleeting time, yet I am unable to bring myself to take the boxes with me

As if the mere thought of moving this memorial of my youth would make it all real

The boxes stay closed, but they split my heart open with fragmented memory and long-expired afternoons

submitted by /u/MemoirsOfSnails
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