MEMORY WOOD

I

On the last day of the month, we prowled the alleys of East Van, from Main to Nanaimo, for relics abandoned by movers eddied by a fraught clock who discarded their belongings too cumbersome to load into the box of a truck. Sometimes, it wasn’t worth the hassle — I understood, having compartmentalized my life into suitcases for years and dragged my being between cities, where I pitched my marrow in rented rooms and furnished with the bare minimum: an aesthetic austere and intentional. A borrowed mattress shoved chic against the wall and creased paperbacks sheafed on a cinderblock and scrap wood shelf: a collection italicized with crisp bundles of dried roses, sunned inverted to saccharine dusk, and an empty wine bottle with candle tucked in the neck, molting fragrant beeswax into a serpent that swelled around the glass. In the closet, a collection of wire hangers drifted on the bar, a frequent spectre of the previous tenant. The hangers curated my collection of vintage lace: nylon slips, skirt suits hemmed for brevity, and eighties dresses that frothed audacious from the statuesque lift of my shoulders.