Liz West, "Junk Drawer," 2013.
It’s like a junk drawer in here, full of obscure treasures, broken toys, books I’d forgotten (whether to read them or what I’d read, well, I forget that too.) I reach in, back to the back, and find there is no end to it. The drawer goes on, the cabinet deepens, and I grow smaller, lever myself up by brass pulls and fall in. Socks make a soft landing.
Forty questions later, the jinn pause, wait to hear what I’ll say in response to the next question. That question is the one unasked: the one to which the only answer is laughter and joy, here in the endless junk drawer of memory where the jinn circle our stories, glow, burn without charring bits of our lost childhood, the forts in the forest, all the fine trivia and pocket-lint of love.