The box said winter in my handwriting, although I kept summer things inside: tickets, a cloth bag from my first festival, and the red scarf I had worn singing with friends beside the river. The wrong label was an old joke nobody understood anymore. When Rifat suggested clearing the storage room, I carried the box onto the balcony and said I would sort it after work. That evening it was gone.
He insisted I had emptied it the previous month. He sounded so certain that I began questioning my memory. I had been working a lot lately and forgetting ordinary things. Yet I clearly remembered the tape catching my sleeve as I lifted the lid. I asked him again. He said surely we had agreed there was no point keeping every foolish thing from before our marriage.
The next day a neighbor called. She had found my old bag in the communal storage area and wanted to check whether she could use it for shopping. I went downstairs so quickly I left lunch on the table. Beside the bag were my tickets in a sack someone had prepared for removal. The scarf was missing. With hands trembling from anger, I separated the papers and found a photograph in which I looked carefree, almost indecently young.
Faced with the sack in our hallway, Rifat changed his story. He said he had not wanted me to change my mind again. We needed space, and I grew attached to useless objects. I asked about his three boxes of cables no appliance used anymore. He said that was different. I did not make him explain the difference I was seeing clearly for the first time: he made the assessments, and I was supposed to adjust.
I sorted the keepsakes over the weekend. I threw away many things myself. That angered him more than keeping everything would have, because he believed it proved he had been right. I explained that the decision had not belonged to him. Harder to bear than the missing scarf was his calm insistence that something I remembered had never happened. That was why I slept at a friend's for several nights, not because of a cardboard box.
When I returned, the storage room was half empty. Rifat had removed his cables. I did not praise him like a child who had tidied his room. We sat down to discuss what could not be replaced by clearing a shelf. Later I did give the bag to my neighbor. I only asked her to return a small badge attached to its strap. It now sits beside my keys, under no obligation to justify to anyone why it stayed.