Dust Motes #2: The Drawer of Little Things

[dustandhoney]

 There’s a small drawer in the corner desk, the one where the varnish has worn smooth under my forearm. It doesn’t hold anything useful. Not really. A dried sprig of lavender from last spring’s hedge. Three buttons — one mother-of-pearl, one wood, one with a forgotten cardigan. A ferry ticket from a rainy day in Wales. Thread. A smooth pebble from Rae.

These aren’t keepsakes in any formal way. No labels. No cataloguing. Just things that wanted keeping, somehow.

It’s not a shrine. It’s not even particularly tidy. But when I open it — usually to look for something else entirely — I always pause. There’s a feeling like holding your breath, like waiting for a kettle to boil, like the hush before a memory lands.

I think we all have a drawer like this. Or a box. A corner. A bowl on a shelf that gathers the soft weight of sentiment. Not displayed, not discarded. Just... kept. Because something in us recognises the shape of meaning, even when the world moves too fast to explain it.

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Do you keep a drawer like this, love? What’s in it today?