The Folder Marked Misc.
The most honest category ever invented: the folder for the things that fit no other envelope, tin, or album. What ends up here, and why it can't be named.
Kept Things
Souvenirs with no gift shop. What gets filed, and why worthless things are the safe ones to keep.
A Jar of Closures for Bags That Are Gone
A pickle jar full of plastic bread tags, thumbed off loaves long since eaten. Dated, colour-sorted, kept past any use.
Proof the Car Crossed Water
A thin ferry receipt, thermal ink already fading, kept as documentation that a trip happened and a vehicle was counted.
Filed Under Something
Filed Under Things That Were Wrapped Around Food
A drawer of packaging that outlived what it packaged: flour-bag labels, butcher paper, tea-tin fronts, coffee bags flattened and filed.
Filed Under Something
Filed Under Places I Only Stopped for Gas
An album of evidence from towns seen through a windshield and a pump: a receipt, a magnet, a keychain from a nowhere I never actually visited.
Filed Under Something
Filed Under Haircuts
An album of dated locks of hair, one envelope per cutting, the colour shifting page by page. The body's own material, labelled.
Filed Under Something
Filed Under Letters
Not the letters. The envelopes: postmarks, return addresses, weather-stained corners, a gift tag, the handling that got the message here.
Filed Under Something
Filed Under Meals
The paper a lifetime of eating out leaves behind: placemats, napkins, receipts, a pie-case label, a chopstick sleeve, creased and stained in one folder.
Filed Under Something
Filed Under Roads
The debris of moving through places: soft-folded maps, a shot glass, magnets, toll and ferry receipts, pressed pennies. Highway memory, filed.
The Cut End Belonged to the Day
I saved a pinch of hair after every haircut and dated it in ballpoint. Not enough to make anything. Enough to prove the body was up to something all along.
The Magnet That Lost Its Magnet
A roadside fridge magnet whose backing fell off. The cheerful printed tile still names the place; it just can't hold to anything anymore.
Places That Trusted You With Fire
A drawer of matchbooks from bars and diners, some struck, some full. Tiny printed proof that certain rooms once handed you an open flame and expected you to behave.
Pens That Outlived the Rooms
A cup of motel pens on the counter, each printed with the name of a place that mostly sold sleep and ice. The stays are over. The pens still write.
Carried Until It Turned to Cloth
A paper napkin folded into a coat pocket and found weeks later, worn soft as fabric by the walking. The meal is gone. The softening is the part that became mine.
The Fold Made It Mine
A paper placemat from a roadside restaurant, creased twice into a purse. Clean, it was trash. Folded and stained, it became a record of the stop.
The Fruit Came Farther Than I Did
A page of tiny stickers peeled from apples, pears, and oranges. Each is a little passport left behind by fruit that traveled farther to reach the kitchen than the person who ate it.
The Part That Was Around the Message
An envelope of return addresses and postmarks cut from mail. The letters are gone. What I kept is the routing — the part that only ever cared where things came from and where they'd been.
State Names in Fake Gold
A shelf of gas-station shot glasses, state and province names printed in gold that isn't gold. Too small to use, too specific to toss. Not wanderlust. Proof I stopped.
Souvenirs With No Gift Shop
Number Forty-Seven, Long Since Called
A paper number torn from a bakery dispenser, the turn long over and the bread long eaten. A 47 kept in a pocket for no reason I can defend. Souvenirs With No Gift Shop.
Souvenirs With No Gift Shop
A Small Oval Passport Inside the Cover
A produce sticker peeled off an apple and pressed inside a notebook cover, found later like a passport I never meant to file. Souvenirs With No Gift Shop.