I found a tag.
It was inside a drawer I hadn’t opened in months.
At first I thought it belonged to some forgotten object.
I turned it over.
There was only one word.
“Property.”
I don’t remember keeping it.
I left it on the table.
Hours later it was still there.
That wasn’t the strange part.
The strange part was the feeling that I had seen it many times before.
I started looking through old photographs.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for.
It happens that way sometimes.
You begin by reviewing an image.
You end up trying to locate the origin of a feeling.
In one folder I found several photographs of empty rooms.
Walls.
Tables.
Closed doors.
Nothing else.
Or so I thought.
When I enlarged one image, I noticed something around the neck of a figure reflected in a distant mirror.
It was too small to identify.
I opened another photograph.
The same figure.
The same room.
The same shadow.
The object was gone.
I spent nearly an hour trying to determine which photograph came first.
I couldn’t.
The dates contradicted each other.
The older one seemed newer.
The newer one seemed to remember something earlier.
I found a note inside the folder.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
It was mine.
The sentence said:
“It was never the collar.”
I felt relief.
For a few seconds.
Then I found a second note.
“It was always the collar.”
Both appeared to have been written on the same day.
The same ink.
The same pressure.
The same handwriting.
I spent the afternoon trying to determine which one was true.
By evening I understood something worse.
Perhaps both were true.
Or perhaps both were hiding the same thing.
I kept reviewing files.
I found searches I don’t remember making.
Dozens of them.
Most had been deleted.
One remained untouched.
“When did you agree to wear it?”
There was no object after the question.
No description.
No explanation.
Just the question.
I couldn’t remember an answer.
This morning I found a new photograph.
I’m certain it didn’t exist yesterday.
In it, I’m standing with my back turned.
Facing a white wall.
I recognized the shirt.
I recognized the room.
I recognized the posture.
The strange part was something else.
On the back, someone had written:
“You already knew it belonged to you.”
I don’t know if it refers to the collar.
I don’t know if it refers to the room.
I don’t know if it refers to me.
I think I need to move my neck.
Or maybe I’ve spent weeks trying to remember whether I already did.
A few minutes ago I found one final note.
It wasn’t signed.
It didn’t need to be.
The sentence said:
“Don’t look for the first time again.”
Beneath it was a date.
It belongs to next month.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it the record cannot close I should…
