Spring Cleaning

A prose poem by Hawk & Quill Poetry Winner Shay Wilcoxen

            My middle school yearbook. An old Barbie doll. The shoe I thought I had lost. The necklace. Lots and lots of dust. The scrapbook from sophomore year. An empty perfume bottle. The necklace. Two jolly ranchers. Some playing cards. A box of old photos. And the necklace you gave me.

            All of these items are sitting underneath my bed, but I keep coming back to yours. I trace my fingers over the locket, open it up and our smiling faces beam back at me. I look at them and wonder, what if. What if things didn’t end the way they did. What if you still met me at my locker and walked me to my classes each day. What if we sat together and ate lunch, while I rambled on about all that was happening in my life. What if I hadn’t changed my mind about us.

            I quickly place the necklace in a nearby box.

            A wadded-up tissue. A book I loved as a child. An old science textbook. Your necklace. A beanie I used to wear in the winter. The stuffed animal Avery gave me. My third-grade diary. Your necklace. Old earbuds that broke. A shoelace. A pair of sunglasses. And your necklace, still sitting in the box.

            No matter what I try to do, it stays there glaring at me like a dark omen. Reminding me of my wrongdoings, reminding me that I will never find another person like you. But I continue to clean, to sort through the clutter.

            Until I find it, the note you left in my locker the first day of the school year. It was simple, a sticky note that read Hello Beautiful in your messy handwriting. We used to laugh at it together, saying it looked like a toddler’s. But now, I couldn’t bring myself to laugh. I could only sit and stare, my attempts at decluttering forgotten as I think about the what ifs.