Cleaning Out My Closet
Originally published on Lithium Magazine
You will need about four trashbags. The biggest you can find. The most durable. You will need to lug those bags into your room. One by one, splay them out on the floor.
This will take about an hour, maybe more, so play some music, something jovial and antsy, a song ripe with the bittersweetness of reinvention. Open the windows, let the light in. Open the closet. Peek in for a moment, tiptoe your fingers along the edges of sweaters and jeans, let yourself drink in the dust and settle into the loss you are about to commit. Decide which section to tackle first. The tee-shirts, let’s say. Pull your hair back. Open up the drawers. Take a trash bag between your hands. Begin.
There are diaries, the kinds we write in rosy gel ink or thin-lined ballpoint pen, the kinds we store in notebooks, and then there are diaries, the kinds we don’t mean to write. Do not study each item too hard, do not try on every blouse or pair of shoes, do not let yourself graze every life you ever authored (or rather, every life that authored you), every person you ever were. Sift through your clothes, stretch out each and every piece of fabric, hold your garments up against the sunlight like you would a magnifying glass to an ant: let the memories smolder.
