The Rummage Shop

By Peter Bowden


They wandered through the antique store, a place that felt like it had been assembled from the discarded memories of a thousand strangers. Dust coated everything, like a fine seasoning for nostalgia. The floorboards creaked like old bones, and the air held the faint scent of mildew and regret, which is exactly what you’d expect from a place that sold the past by the pound. She stopped to examine a set of chipped porcelain dolls, their eyes wide and unblinking, as if still trying to understand why they had been abandoned in the first place. He picked up an old brass telescope, squinted through the cloudy lens, and imagined himself a ship’s captain, though he got seasick on roller coasters.

She found a bundle of letters tied with brittle, yellowing ribbon, the ink faded but the handwriting still sharp and confident, like the words had been written by someone convinced the world needed their every thought preserved. She turned to show him, and he nodded, holding up a cracked pocket watch he had found in a glass case. “Look,” he said, “time really does stop if you beat it up enough.” They shared a laugh that echoed off the walls, bouncing around like ghosts that hadn’t yet figured out how to be quiet.

They stepped out of the shop into the cold bite of autumn, the kind of air that cuts through your clothes and reminds you you’re alive, for now. They walked in step, their shadows stretching long down the sidewalk. He slipped his hand into hers, felt the warmth there, and realized they’d leave nothing behind but a few fingerprints on the glass case and the echo of their laughter. The world kept spinning, indifferent as ever, and the letters and pocket watches and porcelain dolls continued their slow march into oblivion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Woman Who Folded Her Way to Glory

By Peter Bowden
Image
She folded t-shirts at first. Part-time, under fluorescent lights that flickered like indecisive lightning. The shirts were always the wrong size or the wrong color or folded the wrong way, but she smiled anyway. People asked her where the bathrooms were. Sometimes she told them. Sometimes she pointed vaguely, just for sport. It was the beginning of something, though no one—not even she—knew what. In time, she went full-time. Gave tours with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for puppies or preachers. Her voice could bounce off stone and charm a bored teenager. She wrote press releases that made people care about sidewalk chalk festivals and the grand opening of the third best coffee shop in town. She remembered birthdays. Brought cake. Brought joy. She once stapled her blouse to a budget report and didn't notice until after the staff meeting. It became legend. She was that kind of legend. And now—after 29 years, 10,713 days, 4 broken office chairs, 113 bad hair days, 7 crises...
Read more

She Was Always Sad

By Peter Bowden
Image
She was always sad, though most people never noticed. She laughed at the right times, nodded when spoken to, and never once caused a scene. But there was a heaviness behind her eyes, like clouds that never moved, just hovered quietly. At the coffee shop, she always took the seat by the window, looking out as if waiting for someone who never came. The truth was, she had once loved with the kind of fullness that makes you believe you’ll never be alone again. A hand in hers, a voice calling her name from across a quiet room, the warmth of another body curled beside her in the coldest months. And then one day, the world cracked open, and he was gone. Just like that. No storm. No explosion. Just silence where there had once been everything. So she carried that silence. Not with drama or despair, but with the quiet dignity of someone who had known something precious and lost it. Her sadness wasn’t bitterness—it was love, still alive, with nowhere to go. And so she let it live inside her, s...
Read more

Things Are Quiet

By Peter Bowden
Image
The house was quiet now. The mornings came and went like old friends who had grown tired of the visit. He would sit at the kitchen table with his hands around a coffee cup that had long gone cold, staring at the empty chair across from him. The ache was not loud, nor did it rage. It sat in his chest like a stone sunk to the riverbed, unmoved by the current of passing days. He thought about the way she would hum softly while drying the dishes, the sound slipping through the cracks of his memory like sunlight through a dusty window. He missed her without ceremony, without grand displays. It was a dull, persistent throb that never asked for attention but never left him alone. Sometimes he would walk the old path down to the river, where they once threw crumbs to the ducks and talked about small things that seemed bigger then. The air was thick with the scent of pine, and he could hear the water moving over the rocks, just as it always had. It made him angry sometimes—how the world did not...
Read more