Cardboard Box
The coffee is bitter; the house is empty of tea bags and he thinks he should start a shopping list. The sun chases the shadows up his legs sitting at the dining room table. Where once there were shadows, everything all at once is now in the light, including the cardboard box he has left by the front door. He has spent the past couple of weeks collecting the detritus of his life he found washed up in the corners of his house and collected when happened upon by chance as he wandered from room to room. Poor pickings to sell at a car-boot sale he thinks, but probably important to his family. These fragments of a life needing an explanatory synopsis, like an artist’s statement of intent. He hasn’t found a pen. This is the last time he will have a need for the box and its contents. They will be left for others to find and sort through. He knows this will be an error he cannot correct.
A Fullness in Brevity - Adam Byatt 