empty

You can learn a lot about people by the things they carry. Maybe there is a special photograph to them they keep in their wallet, hidden behind some old business cards. Or some letters they keep and read every day, unfolded and refolded hundreds of times in a jacket pocket. A favorite book. A tool. Even their trash can say a lot about them. Ticket stubs and bus transfers, receipts and candy wrappings. Little stories about lives, told in useless relics.

I used to pretty regularly unearth some receipts or cards or trash that reminded me of something I'd done--a dinner or a party or something. It was fun putting on jackets I hadn't worn in a while and finding evidence of what I'd done.

Except, my pockets are empty now. My bag is completely empty. I don't know what happened. There's nothing there--not so much as a crumpled straw wrapper to indicate that once I had been to a restaurant. None of the books I used to carry around in case I needed to read. Neither pen nor chapstick tube, sunglasses nor wallet. And every time I try to add something to my pockets or my bag it just disappears eventually.

So now I carry nothing, like some shallow movie prop, something that exists to add depth to the scene without possessing any depth of its own.