Cardboard

It's a damp, musky odor. The kind that's heavy, unmistakable, especially in the early summer evening heat. Somehow, my memories are always hot. Every scene is beading with swyeat, a rising fire from somewhere in the earth up you if you stayed outside too long. T here's no good way to explain heat if it isn't something you understand,much like the cold. There's a type of cold that stays in your bones. It hardens you.

The heat, on the other hand, doesn't. It softens you, liquifies you, and makes you pliable. It's always hazy, allowing things to exist in the shadows in a way they can't anywhere else. Maybe it's because people come out at night. Maybe it's because it's hotter in hell.

My therapist taught me to use my senses to ground me. Most people don't really think about their sense of smell as something they ought to use more often but there are a few things you can pick out if you take a few deep breaths.

Aluminum. The smell of time. Sweat. And maybe evil.

I'd thought about opening the storage unit for a long time, fantacising about all kinds of experiences. Especially the last few hours I spent travelling home to arrive face to face with my family's storage unit. I'd been here in my dreams, maybe in my nightmares. Maybe once in person. Maybe.

There are a lot of things that are hazy. I'm suddenly pulling the door back like I've been a farmhand, strong and able as I wrench it open. The air is stale and hot and heavy and solid with dust and memories, rendering me down to my knees.

I'm not standing there anymore - I'm on ,my grandmother's porch, sitting between her dogs and my sisters. The smell of the dust has me topsy turvey down memory lane, and like a child who sees a ghost - I lose rationality and conciousness all at once.

"Are you - hey, hey - you're okay," he's saying, and the familiarity of his voice touches me like his hands might if I were beside... and then I realize I'm sitting in my living room, looking up at the attic I was trying to get inside to get down our Christmas decorations.

The scent of memories is so strong. That old, certain smell. I shake it off, trying to smile at my husband. "I did not need to climb those stairs that fast," I say, taking a deep breath, trying not to worry myself. It's obvious he's worried for a moment, but it fades as if it's a normal scenario. I mean, it can be. I hit the floor pretty easily. So I sigh, take another deep breath, and grit my teeth when I can smell the nauseating scent of cardboard and what those boxes held.

"Do you mind helping me unbox things upstairs? I don't want to bring the boxes down so we it's not cluttered," I ask, hoping my husband doesn't ask any other questions. The taste of my past is too fresh on my tongue and I don't want to serve up any answers right now.