The Portable Junk Drawer

Jackie's handbag was like a junk drawer, objects of mysterious origin colliding with daily necessities in a harried archeological dig through orphaned pen caps, a jumble of keys, tokens and hair bands, loose coins and crumbs and ancient grocery lists, so many options for chapstick she could moisten an army, her well-cased phone. Bits of old nuts, dried up orange peel, and even a few pills, genesis unknown, held dirty promises of a relief too risky to attempt. Random makeup, caps to mysterious vessels, folded bills stuffed in ripped pockets, napkins scribbled with directions—it was her way of not having to deal with it, a place to put it all, a depository for when options or time seemed short. Cleaning it out never much interested her, but when she did it was plainly ineffectual, only a matter of time before the careful organization reversed itself. And, somehow, some of it never quite seemed to disappear: she barely saw the tiny shreds of paper anymore, gum and juice box wrappers, ubiquitous and unseen like confetti at a ball, and the ink from a pen, parts still roaming, had long since leaked and dried into a shimmering blue crust. Her sunglasses, too scratched to care about anymore, remained unsheathed and vulnerable, always at the bottom, always caught up on a strap or straw, clashing with the spoons and small toys required to tame her distractible toddler—or that is, when he still was one. Yet, this was not the only evidence of a life once lived: a bejeweled lighter and scraps from an ancient pack of cigarettes remained, tobacco dust thick and still clinging to anything with a texture. Last, but certainly not least, her large and unwieldy wallet, practically purse-sized itself, perhaps the only useful thing in the whole bag, worked to justify the entire load--and it floated on a sea of found objects, the shrapnel of life, her only art.