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By Sanjana Tarigopula

Each year my roof is glazed by particles that unify to forge a dense, white coating of chilly comfort. The chill begs a sense of home within me, a companion. Time to pay a visit to my favorite antique store. The familiar scent embraces me in its warm and comforting hug. I take my time to browse through the new additions. I navigate past the familiar landmarks of dressers and lampshades to chart new discoveries: A wooden desk, a record player, and a film camera. 

My hand grazes an engraving on the side of the desk. The scribble of two letters connected within a heart transports me back to the childlike giddiness I grew out of. Pondering the possible permutations of who could have formed the same foundational memories at this very desk fascinates me endlessly. A whispered call, a white lie, a silly distraction. The past etched on this desk feels reminiscent of the youthful devotion that we used drawing tools to leave engravings of. A canvas on which my past memories of love and losses imprint with ease.

My attention shifts to the golden rays leaping off the neighboring record player. While the object itself feels alien yet riveting to me, my mind is intimately acquainted with the fantasies it once accompanied. Perhaps a yearning lover, aching for their one through their past soundtrack. Another submerged in the warm embrace of their muse and the melody, dancing around domesticity. The record player adapted seamlessly. Playing Sinatra at the request of one owner and Ms. Lauryn Hill for another. My heart warms thinking about how many stages this player had the pleasure of knowing. If only those strangers knew the serenity their record player would bring me.

I lift the camera up by its worn-out strap and inspect the intricate fingerprints that trace it. The lines from each print endlessly detailed the narratives endlessly interlaced. The chipped lens cover, the worn capture button, the dusted coloring, all the products of past tender care. It must have been slung along on every memorable outing, capturing the complex joy of its owner and their love. Giving their futures a reason to reminisce. One such reason happened upon me as I noticed a roll of film still in its place. Holding it up to the sunlight reveals snippets of a past home. A gaze, a touch, a smile that I recognized. Although the muse in the frame is a stranger to me, I felt inexplicably familiar with the exact moments I once knew. 

Stepping back from the myriad journeys I peered into, I resign myself to a perpetual bittersweetness. All the antiques I knew before – ones tried and ones admired from afar – now had their turn at having a new owner. No matter how willful an attempt, the traces of previous companions are always left. While these remnants turn some buyers away, I am ever entranced by the antiques. All evidence of love; those that have existed and those that will come to join them.