Things we keep

Some objects stay because memory needs a place to live.

There’s a drawer somewhere, in every home, in every life, where we keep the things that no longer serve a purpose but somehow still matter. A ticket stub. A nearly empty perfume bottle.

A Polaroid that came out too dark.

They have no value in the ordinary sense. You can’t sell them, or use them, or even explain them without sounding sentimental. Yet, when you try to throw them away, something stops you, a quiet resistance you can’t rationalize.

Maybe it’s because these objects carry a kind of emotional fingerprint. They hold the weight of a moment that no longer exists, but still feels close when you touch it. The scent that lingers in an empty bottle, the faded ink on a boarding pass, the soft crackle of an old photo, each becomes a fragment of who we once were.

We live in an age that worships the new, the clean, the replaceable. But the things we keep remind us that life isn’t meant to be constantly refreshed. Some moments deserve to be held, even if only in the corner of a drawer.

Maybe keeping is another form of remembering. Or maybe it’s how we learn to let go, slowly, gently, without erasing what was.

The truth is, we never choose what stays. Certain things just refuse to leave.