Someone once asked me if I collect anything.
We were sitting outside a laundromat in Sangenjaya, waiting for the dryer to finish its second cycle.
It was late autumn.
You could smell sweet potato from a nearby cart.
The question came out of nowhere, as such questions do.
And I didn’t know how to answer.
Not right away.
I don’t collect stamps.
Or coins.
Or vinyls, though I admire people who do.
My shelves aren’t curated. My books are dog-eared. I’ve lost more keepsakes than I’ve kept.
But later that night, walking home, it came to me—
I do collect things.
They’re just harder to see.
—
I collect small silences.
The kind that appear when you’re sitting next to someone you trust, and neither of you feels the need to fill the air.
The kind that live in early trains and late diners and bedrooms right before one of you says something that changes everything.
I collect almosts.
Almost said it.
Almost stayed.
Almost made it to the station on time.
Almost changed your life with one sentence.
I collect faces of people I never spoke to—
a girl who sat across from me in a ferry to Yakushima reading Banana Yoshimoto,
a man in a beige coat who lit a cigarette in the exact rhythm of my father,
a boy in Kyoto running after a crow like it had stolen his name.
I collect things I regret throwing away,
old letters,
a scarf from a stranger,
the sweater I wore the night I fell in love and didn’t realize it.
I collect misunderstandings,
half-heard phrases that burrowed too deep,
texts I reread too many times,
moments I thought meant nothing that turned out to be the hinge of everything.
And lately,
I’ve been collecting versions of myself I’ve outgrown.
Not to mourn them,
but to keep them close—
like faded Polaroids I don’t want to display,
but can’t bear to lose.
—
People think collections are neat things, labeled and arranged.
Mine aren’t.
They live in the back of drawers.
In playlists I never finish.
In the smell of old tea.
In photos I never took but remember clearly.
In words I haven’t said out loud yet, but whisper to myself before falling asleep.
—
Wabi-Sabi in the Unsorted
Not all collections are trophies.
Some are evidence.
That you were here.
That something mattered, even if no one else saw it.
And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s what it means to be a person—
to keep picking up little fragments
of days,
of feelings,
of almosts,
and carry them with you quietly.
Not because they’re worth something.
But because they are yours.
So yes.
I collect things.
Even if no one would pay for them.
Even if they don’t fit on a shelf.
Especially then.
life 