Things I Still Carry

A quiet collection of moments that refused to be thrown away.

Some are only a few minutes long: a head resting on a shoulder, a lie told to a worried parent over the phone. Others stretch across months or years: the slow death of a dream, the weight of a job that was never chosen, the love that might be love and might be nothing at all.

These are not one story. They are the small, heavy things one girl kept when she was told to let go: train tickets from journeys that changed her, pressed flowers from almost-relationships, receipts from days she survived on one meal, notes she never sent.

Each piece is short enough to read in a single breath, but lingers long after the page is turned.

This book is a drawer pulled open in the half-light: a private archive of almosts, of almost-loves, of almost-lives; proof that even the things we cannot name still take up space inside us.