styrofoam snow
Moments and decades of objects like sun-faded snorkeling flippers to unwaxed skis, leaning against one another like the seasons. A couple clears out a storage unit, filling one idle afternoon trapped within its own experience. Like a snowflake suspended inside a winter storm, a deflated pool floatie trapped in the summer air of '79, the chimes marking the hours of a day. He ponders his large accordion collection and boxes of stuff he swears he will one day have use for. She resists shaking him by the shoulders like a snow globe to disturb his perception that has settled at the bottom of its floor. There is a difference between preserving something and embalming it. She witnesses her own psyche reflected in the thick glass of the snow globe. She stamps her face against its cool enclosure. She longs to live at its center, be the center of his decoration. Small Styrofoam spheres rest atop the house whose architecture is nostalgia: his favorite sci-fi reruns, Broadway musical scores, the fragrance of Aztec marigold stems snapped in half. The white flakes mimic packing foam, as if his past was recently assembled. She desires to be his snowfall, hover at the edge of his weather. As she pulls her face away from the glass, she suggests he donate the knickknack. He shudders.
sahar khan ben, 2026 pen illustration