A box full of ghost memories

My family like most others believes in living in a clean house

So we try our best to keep it clean

We scrub the flat surfaces, the tables, the kitchen counter tops

And always make sure that the guest room is extra neat

I've always loved the idea of 'A place for everything and everything in its place'

So when we tend to find things, clutter on our table and kitchen counter tops that doesn't belong

We shove it inside drawers and cabinets till they're full to the brim

Till the point where we have to pull on them one -two- three -four and five times to just wedge them open

Not that we open them too often, not at all

But you know, I had to say it.

So once we're done with cleaning all the surfaces and shoving all our mistakes inside of fragile wooden boxes

Inevitably. So it happens,call it human tendency or just plain stupidness

The fact that we misplace things. That for the life of us we just can't remember where we kept that one important business card

That one notebook with the answer to that question

That one pair of earrings you can't live without

But The surfaces have no story to tell so you get your hands dirty overturning all the transient boxes you inherit

You rip them from the places they're fixed in -impatient, violent you can almost hear the heart rate dipping slowly, slowly, and it's gone now.

 A line on a monitor, another line on a monitor

Gather them together to form another one of the boxes you turn upside down to find what you lost

Run your hands along the wooden side, somehow squeezing your hand in between only to feel the sting of a splinter pierce your hand and that's your memory

There are too many full-empty boxes to search in this full-empty space

Sometimes it can stop my family

But mostly it doesn't. Full and empty, empty and full boxes somehow always have space to fit your hand in and spill the universe out onto the spotless surface

Tainting it with their stars which burn more than they shine

A smattering of blackholes which pull at the edges of your vision and your mind until all that's left is, is a full-empty feeling

That's the thing about these empty boxes

Is that we open them to find ghost memories too often.