The Object That Learned the Shape of Me #WriteAPageADay @Blogchatter

The Weight of What Remains

I keep it
in the lowest drawer,
beneath expired warranties
and instruction manuals
for machines I no longer own.

It isn’t valuable
by any sensible measure.
No gold.
No signature.
No story anyone would bid on.

Just an object
with edges softened by years of handling,
a surface dulled
by the oils of my hands,
by the quiet insistence of being held
when words failed.

I have tried—
once or twice—
to throw it away.

I lift it,
feel its familiar resistance,
and something in my chest tightens
like a knot remembering
how it was first tied.

This object
has learned the shape of me.

It remembers
the weight I was
before I knew what weight meant,
before gravity was grief
and not just a law
taught in classrooms
with chalk dust
floating like miniature galaxies
in afternoon light.

I don’t remember the exact day
it entered my life.
Only the season—
monsoon perhaps,
or a winter that smelled of paper and ink,
of damp wool and unspoken hope.

Outside,
trees were shedding or preparing to,
the sky undecided,
clouds rehearsing rain
without committing.

Inside,
someone handed this object to me
without ceremony.
As if they knew
it would outlive the moment,
outlast the room,
outlast even us.

At first,
it was just a thing.

A thing that fit in my palm.
A thing that did its job.
A thing that stayed silent
while my life learned how not to.

But objects are patient.
They wait
until you are ready
to hear what they’ve been holding.

Years passed.
Rooms changed.
Cities rearranged themselves around my footsteps.

I learned the names of constellations
only to forget them again,
learned how quickly love can evaporate
when exposed to expectation,
learned how loneliness doesn’t always announce itself—
sometimes it hums,
low and constant,
like electricity behind walls.

This object came with me
through all of it.

It sat on desks where deadlines loomed
like gathering storms.
It lay beside beds
where sleep refused to land.
It listened as I rehearsed conversations
that would never happen,
confessions addressed
to people who had already moved on.

When my hands shook,
it absorbed the tremor.
When my voice broke,
it remained intact.

I think that’s why I trust it.

It has seen me
without turning away.

There were nights
when the world felt too sharp—
news screaming,
ambitions collapsing under their own noise,
the future arriving faster
than I could make sense of it.

On those nights,
I would reach for this object
the way one reaches for a familiar star
in a sky crowded with brightness.

Not because it promised answers,
but because it stayed
where I left it.

Reliability
is a kind of love
we don’t talk about enough.

This object knows
how many versions of me have existed.

The one who believed
time was generous.
The one who learned otherwise.
The one who tried to become smaller
to fit into rooms that refused to expand.
The one who finally understood
that shrinking is not survival—
it’s erasure.

Its surface carries marks
I didn’t notice until much later.
A scratch from a careless fall.
A faint crack from a moment of anger
I don’t fully remember.

I study these imperfections
the way astronomers study craters on the moon—
evidence of impact,
proof of endurance.

Nothing escapes collision.
Not planets.
Not people.
Not objects we mistake for being inanimate.

Sometimes,
when the house is quiet
and the night stretches long,
I imagine this object
as a small satellite,
orbiting my life,
keeping track of distances
I no longer know how to measure.

Distance from who I was
to who I am.
Distance from what hurt
to what healed.
Distance from the center of things
to the edges where I often stand,
observing.

The universe is mostly empty space,
they say.

And yet,
it holds everything.

I think about that
when I hold this object.
How emptiness isn’t absence—
it’s allowance.
Room for motion.
Room for becoming.

People have told me
to let it go.

You can replace it, they say.
You can buy another.
You don’t need to carry everything forward.

They’re not wrong.
But they’re not listening.

Because this object
is not clutter.
It is continuity.

It is the proof
that I was here before this moment
and survived.
That something ordinary
can witness an extraordinary amount of living
without demanding explanation.

If I throw it away,
I won’t lose the past—
the past is stubborn.

What I’ll lose
is a quiet companion
that never asked me
to be better than I was,
only honest.

One day,
I know,
there will be a final drawer.
A final sorting.
Hands that are not mine
will decide what matters.

This object may not make the cut.

And that’s alright.

Its work will be done.

For now,
it stays.

A small, unremarkable thing
holding the gravity of years,
a reminder that even in a vast,
expanding universe,
some orbits are worth maintaining.

I close the drawer gently,
as if tucking a star back into the dark,
trusting it will still be there
when I need to remember
that I, too,
have survived my own collisions.

What the Object Remembers for Me

Memory does not arrive
like a photograph.

It comes
as temperature.
As pressure behind the eyes.
As a sudden knowing
that the air once felt different
around a younger version of me.

When I touch this object now,
memories don’t line up politely.
They scatter—
like birds startled from a wire—
each carrying a fragment
of a life I once stood inside
without realizing it was already becoming past.

There is a memory
of a room with no curtains,
sunlight spilling in unchecked,
dust floating lazily
as if time itself had slowed
to watch me breathe.

I was lighter then.
Not happier—
just unburdened by foresight.

This object was there,
resting nearby,
absorbing the quiet optimism
of someone who believed
that effort always led somewhere visible.

Another memory rises—
sharp this time.

A late evening.
The kind that smells of cold metal and regret.
The kind where silence
isn’t peaceful
but accusatory.

I remember holding this object
while rehearsing apologies
to no one in particular.
The world outside the window
flickered with distant lights,
each one a life continuing
without regard for my small collapse.

The object stayed warm in my hand.
As if warmth could be stored.
As if reassurance could be physical.

Memory is strange that way—
it assigns roles to things
without asking permission.

There are memories I didn’t know
were stored here
until my fingers traced familiar grooves
and suddenly
I am back in a train seat,
watching landscapes blur
into watercolor impressions—
fields surrendering to towns,
towns dissolving into night.

Movement without arrival.

I remember thinking
how life felt like that then—
always passing through,
never quite landing.

This object remembers
the exact weight of that thought.

It remembers the year
I learned that endings
rarely announce themselves.
They simply stop returning your calls.

I remember placing this object down
on a table where conversations went unfinished,
where laughter lingered too long
after sincerity left the room.

That was the night
I realized memory is not loyal to joy alone.
It keeps everything.

Even the moments
you would rather unlearn.

Especially those.

Sometimes,
memories surface
that feel older than me.

A sense of having stood
at the edge of something vast—
not a place,
but a decision.

I didn’t cross it.
I stayed.
I chose safety disguised as reason.

This object knows that version of me too.
The one who wondered,
years later,
about the alternate constellation
my life could have formed.

In the dark,
I imagine memory as starlight—
traveling impossible distances
just to reach me now,
long after the source has changed
or burned out entirely.

What I receive
is not the event,
but its echo.

And this object—
this quiet witness—
has been catching those echoes
all along.

There are tender memories too.
I don’t forget those.

A morning when laughter arrived
before thought.
A hand brushing mine
without agenda.
A sense of belonging so effortless
it felt invisible.

Those memories feel soft
when I hold the object.
As if it has learned
how to cradle them
without breaking their fragility.

I realize now
that memory doesn’t live in the past.

It lives
in the present moment
that is brave enough
to feel it.

This object has been teaching me that—
that remembrance isn’t nostalgia,
it’s recognition.

A way of saying:
I see who I was.
I acknowledge who I became.

The cosmos does this too.
It remembers itself
in patterns of light,
in the afterglow of creation,
in the quiet math
that keeps galaxies from flying apart.

Nothing truly disappears.
It only changes form.

Perhaps that’s why
I refuse to throw this object away.

It is not the memories themselves—
they would survive without it.

It is the ritual of remembering
with my hands,
with my breath,
with a heart that understands now
what it couldn’t then.

I place the object back in its drawer,
but the memories stay with me—
orbiting, expanding,
finding new meanings
as I do.

And in this vast, unfinished universe,
I learn again
that holding on
is not always about refusal—
sometimes
it is simply an act of gratitude.