Boxes

One day his house will no longer have enough space for him to move about in, he thinks. Because there will be too many boxes. Already they sit piled in corners, and perch on the tops of wardrobes and skulk under tables. His feet kick into cardboard when he pulls his chair in closer to his desk. The attic is already full of them, piled like a bowl full of brown sugar cubes. Dust settled quietly, a blanket of delicate snow. He never opened them.

Inside were memories, in physical form. The things he couldn't bear to throw away, the things he couldn't bear to look at again.

In some boxes were letters. Ever letter he'd ever received, folded neatly and placed back into their envelopes. Organised by sender, by date. Telling stories and spilling secrets to no one, in silence.

In others were Christmas cards, wishing one another well, tucked into each other like flimsy, festive matrioshkas. Birthday cards counted his years in garish technicolor. Their words were fleetingly scribbled, though in categorisation they had been immortalised.

Boxes of bank statements marked his salaries, his savings, his expenditures. Boxes of receipts showed his every purchase. Bills and fines, perfectly preserved; his life as an archive, an exhibition, pictures painted by printer ink on headed paper.

One box held cassette tapes, from a time when answering machines weren't virtual and automated. Each tape was filled with voice messages, quick and stammering, lengthy and long-winded. Voices from friends and ex-lovers. Some he didn't speak to. Some who were gone.

When he was old, he told himself, he would open this box, amongst others. He would take the tapes, one by one, and listen to the messages left for him long ago. Listen to the lost voices, and smile whilst tears made shiny tracks down his wizened cheeks.