His Old Apartment.

In the back of the closet for 87 years, his life: layered between cling-wrapped bedsheets fresh from the cleaners ten years previous, four crisp, uncut sheets alternating green, black, green, black of Canadian mint one dollar bills; standing between big band pressed vinyl, a forty year yellowed history of National Geographic, heralding new age space age on spines uncracked, covers unbent; tucked behind stale liniments and powdered pill boxes with peeling labels, one pair women’s earrings – gold and emerald sparkling in dull light.

Photos, yellowed and peeling, tucked between unread book pages – scenery blurred by tour bus windows, landmarks and rayon-clad tourists crowding the lens, him riding a desert camel, a skinny sepia smile spread across youthful lips; a sock, tired and threaded, full and pushed to the back of the mahogany drawer, a numismatist’s dream of collected international currency: one coin for one memory; a single postage stamp floating on the shelf, glue dried and flaked, a memory of the shadowed sore spot lacerated on the postcard fallen to the floor, faded words: wish you were here, in cursive scroll.

The liquor cabinet, a passport: tequila, ouzo, sake, scotch. Etched shot glasses, engraved gold chalices, frosted martini glasses – dustbowl passages to old boys’ club deals, when handshakes and paper napkin signatures were the stuff of good business; bank notes and promissory titles on rice-thin paper, faded from forgetfulness.

A scratched mint tin with loose lid, inside the letters R.C.A.F. etched into the wings of lapel pins; a pendant, heavy with time, of a boy kneeling at an alter, the year 1938 inscribed; a locket, inside the photo of a man, young and tanned, smiling and sure.

A blue steel tool box housing crescent and socket and open end and monkey and pipe and torque and mole wrenches, original price tags affixed in place; unopened packages of screws, uncapped glue, unbroken seals on caulking tubes.

A fishing rod, a camping tent, a mosquito net, two kerosene lanterns – all forty years new, all unused.

The apartment: a front.

In the top drawer of the bureau, a stack of photos carefully tucked between the folds of a letter: the locket man in Palm Springs, in Greece, in Japan, in Hawaii, in England, in Vancouver, his beauty of youth a shifting timeline, young to old – the evidence of a true love kept in the back of the closet for a lifetime.

xoxo
M.L. H’art