On Exploring the Attic of My Mind Briana Gonzalez, Senior Poetry Editor for You You are a cardboard box of memories I dig into. I pull out your favorite t-shirt, stained with your favorite soda, I think. I unearth the way you scuttle from compliments like they burn. I kept the amber of your gaze and how it always reminded me of the fossil from Jurassic Park, a heartbeat frozen in time. What did you smell like? I claw through the box for your shoulder against mine. Did you hold my hand when I got that tattoo? Did I do the same for you? Did you love cheesy 00’s music? Did you mix mustard and ketchup into gloppy piles of sunset and drown your French fries in the dying light? I think you had sloppy, uneven handwriting, the kind only squinting and muttering can fix. The love letters I find are not yours. Maybe you had a pet mouse or worm or fish when you were younger. The cardboard doesn’t tell me, but I feel like you did. I fall into the box and flail for something to ground me, but the emptiness slips through my hands and burrows deep in the silence where my heart tries to speak. You would call it empty’s nest. Would you? Did we get in that car crash together? You were always scared of the animatronic tyrannosaurs rex. Did you hate the ending of Stuck in Love? Did you cry when I left? I stumble on a voice memo of your laugh, and it sounds like a fully loaded dishwasher on the rinse cycle. I scramble through this box, but I don’t remember if it’s yours or yours.
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