Artifacts

Back in Whanganui, I am re-homing our stuff.

Coffee machine, can-opener, impact driver, sofa. In the deadline rush of selling our house these things were reduced to inventory. But time has flowed around them and through them, depositing a fine silt of meaning.

Coffee machine. Laying in bed on a weekend morning feeling loved because I knew you were making me my favourite coffee in my favourite mug to drink there.

Can opener. In Blenheim, me trying to sell you on the idea of a $35 can-opener (the blade will never slip because the shaft is square!) and you finally relenting, as you often did.

Impact driver. Working together on Bottle Rock setting up traplines. Eating sandwiches in the dappled fragrance of beech. What did we used to talk about in the early days?

Sofa. Our perfect sofa custom made to mark our graduation to the middle class. Winter nights with the fire and a glass of whiskey, pausing the show for gossip and speculation.

I open the boxes and hold the memories. Feel the feelings.

A friend talking this evening about the birth of his daughter “…trauma isn’t about the event; it is about our relationship to the event.” So it is with our artifacts. To me they are the mnemonics of our time but to anyone else they’re blank.

Inside my horizon snow falls across our diverged paths like static.