The Finer Things

by Lore White

A paper trail tells the least interesting story here. 

Reveals only who had the money and the space and the want for new cupboards. The character of antiques comes from the ways they were touched before you could touch them. 

These two cupboards, we’ll call them siblings, tasked with keeping a gentle grip on a multigenerational internal world.

Look back over the past three hundred years and see them standing tall either side of an equally ornate bedroom doorway. Filled to the brim, but neatly so, each item folded precisely. Corners meeting corners. Their dark carved doors swirl with playful characters and fill the room with the faint scent of camphor.

The doors must be open fully to gain access to the drawers. A wide and dramatic gesture fit for the rare tree felled to make this pair.       

To fill each space the mind holds out silk and runs it through fingers. Now soaked in sweet soft colour our storage is worthy of it’s carved dragon guards. What moth would dare feast itself here, after the soft clink of the brass fish door handle falls quiet and closed.

It’s only in the last nineteen years they’ve been empty, grown restless and creaky. Become things to be stored themselves. Away in some back room where the lights turn themselves off without movement. Arms full of stale air and mold.

Until moments ago, until this moment, until you with your touch came to fill drawers with finer things again.