The box in the closet is never opened.

It sits buried under layers of duffle bags and scarves and whatever else Elsie MacDonald can toss on top of it, as if the act of piling more and more on top of it will prevent it from ever being opened again. 

And, maybe, on some level burying it in old junk also keeps it buried in Elsie's mind. But that's something for Elsie's therapist to help her unpack later. For now, the box will stay where Elsie left in four years ago – in the far right corner of the bedroom closet in Elsie's small one-bedroom apartment. Buried, and mostly forgotten. 

Maybe, in a few years, she'll move someplace nicer. Someplace with a radiator that doesn't rattle and clank like a leprechaun's gotten loose in the pipes, someplace with proper closet, or someplace with a window that will fully close.

Maybe then, when she's packed and her life is compartmentalized into cardboard boxes, she'll sit in the middle of her near empty bedroom and hold that heart shape boxed in her lap. She'll marvel at how light it feels in her hands, as though she'd expected it to be full of bricks or hardcover editions of old novels. Something heavier, at the very least. 

Then, carefully, she'll brush the dust off the lid and open the box and begin rifling through it's contents. They're innocuous items - torn movie tickets, old Polaroids and pictures,  scraps of papers and receipts. Honestly, they'll mostly look like a pile of recycling from someone's junk drawer. But they're more than that, at least for Elise.

She'll hold one of the pictures in her hands, probably one taken at her sisters wedding so many years ago, face torn between a frown and a smile. But then, she'll think about the girl in the photo with her. Kara, with her vibrant laugh and ridiculous dancing, who had made a dreary wedding all the more tolerable, and a small smile will win out. Maybe next she'll check in on Kara, just a quick Facebook search, and see that she's settled down in Maine with a wife and a dog, and Elsie will try to be happy for her.

Her next thought, then, will be that this is all garbage. Thumbing through old receipts, tickets, and Polaroids, nothing particularly remarkable or exciting about any piece really. Except, that torn up stub for the Ferris wheel was all the remained of Elsie's first date, and the tickets for a festival screening of Titanic in 2002 was the last good date she had with Kristof before he cheated on her with Jenifer from Intro Biology. 

Maybe not garbage after all, then.

And so, that heart shaped box will make the move with Elsie MacDonald, and find a new hiding place in some new nook or cranny. 

Between now and then, however, additions will be made. New acquisitions for Elsie MacDonald's Tiny Museum of Heartbreak. 

When the box was given to Elsie, years ago, it certainly had no idea it would become a strange and melancholy archive of relationships past. Back then, it was an innocent enough gesture -Part of a good, old-fashioned, promposal in high school, in fact. Left on her pillow thanks to her conspiring mother and boy-next-door boyfriend, Chris. When she'd first opened it, it hadn't been filled with chocolates or roses, but instead with skittles (a favourite snack of hers back in high school) and a note. The skittles are not a current part of the collection, Elsie took care of that basically straight away, but that note still remains. 

Done in scratchy, nervous, penmanship, "Elsie Elizabeth MacDonald, will you go the prom with me?" is still entirely legible, though the paper itself has been creased and folded many times over. The next addition to the collection, then, would be their prom photo. Awkwardly staged, with Chris's arms wrapped stiffly around her waist, and both of their smiles forced. Only Elsie and Chris would ever know that after the picture was taken, both raced off to his father's borrowed Buick for a moment of "alone time".  No evidence of that would ever make it's way into the box, which was probably for the best as Elsie didn't recall it being particularly memorable. 

So Chris was the first layer of the collection. Next would be Kristof, then Rimah, then Kara, and there was still space left for more. Soon there would be Kyle, who would then leave for backpacking in Amsterdam and never return, and then Amanda (who will be great, but married). 

Maybe it's depressing that Elsie is keeping these things. Her mother certainly seems to think so.  But, to be honest, it's not a thing Elsie thinks about much in her day-to-day. The box stays hidden until she needs to move or until she's had a few too many glasses of wine and just needs a moment to reminiscence. 

What are museums for, if not cataloging the past?

This is hardly a grand collection, even Elsie will admit to that. Inside this heart shaped box you will find no cultural relics, no fine china or ancient weaponry, just the paper trail of a young woman's dating history. And sure, maybe it is a little sad. But the bad times aren't in the box, those exist only in Elsie, in emotional scars. What would a random guest ever see? A hoarders collections of scraps and some blurry photos of a young girl in braces with her first boyfriend hanging off her arm? What meaning could that have to anyone but Elsie.

So, maybe one day, Elsie MacDonald will conspire to get rid of the box.

Or, maybe, she won't. Instead, she could leave it for her future kids to discover one day, to uncover secrets about their mother and all that she'd been through. Let them open it, and figure out what exactly it means.