The packages arrive on Tuesdays in boxes that fold through dimensions that shouldn’t exist. Each one hums a different frequency of sorrow, cataloged carefully in my basement where grief crystallizes if it gets too warm. Today’s delivery includes three boxes of fresh heartbreak that glow like negative stars, a crate of childhood regrets that whisper their own lullabies, and one delicate envelope of lost dreams that changes color with the phases of the moon.
My regulars know the rules: handle with care, keep away from direct sunlight, never open near mirrors. Grief might recognize itself and multiply into infinite reflections of loss. Last week, Mrs. Chan’s package of widowed sighs shattered when her cat knocked it off the mantle. She spent three days crying over a husband she’d never married, her tears turning to diamonds that rolled across her floor like marbles made of memory.
I sort them by density – heavy sorrows on the bottom shelf where gravity is stronger, lighter melancholies up top where they can float. Sometimes at night I hear them rearranging themselves, singing harmonies in frequencies that make the walls ripple. The postal service won’t touch them anymore, not since a package of abandoned hopes escaped and turned an entire post office into a garden of glass flowers, each petal containing a different shade of longing.
This morning, a new type of delivery arrived – a teenager’s first heartbreak packed in a box made of broken promises and prom tickets. When I opened it, the air turned the color of midnight and tasted like tears and cherry gloss. The heartbreak tried to escape, painting lovelorn graffiti on the walls in phosphorescent words that spelled themselves backward. I had to sing it to sleep with a lullaby made of future happiness before it would settle.
“You’re the best grief handler in the city,” my clients tell me. They don’t know I started this business trying to store my own. When you’ve got too much, it makes sense to help others carry theirs. Besides, grief gets restless if you keep it too long – starts growing thorns, or developing teeth, or worst of all, learning to speak in voices you almost recognize.
Last month, a grief so heavy it bent time around itself arrived in a box made of black holes and broken watches. Inside, a mother’s loss folded space like origami, turning corners into curves, making hallways lead back to moments that hadn’t happened yet. It took three days to catalog, during which my basement aged a century while my attic turned into a nursery where unborn memories played.
The morning’s deliveries go smoothly. A box of teenage tears to the retirement home, where they’ll water the memory gardens that grow flowers that bloom with forgotten first kisses. Three vials of abandoned dreams to the university, where they fuel the quantum physics experiments that prove nostalgia can bend light. A package of yesterday’s regrets to the bar on 9th Street – they buy in bulk to distill into their signature cocktails that let you forget your own name for exactly one hour.
Sometimes the griefs interact in unexpected ways. Once, a child’s lost balloon dreams crashed into an old man’s regrets about the sea. The collision created a new color that only sad people can see. Another time, two different heartbreaks fell in love, and their shelf sprouted roses that bloomed with photographs of happier endings.
I’ve learned to be careful with certain combinations. Never store first loves next to last goodbyes – they’ll create paradoxes that taste like forever. Keep funeral tears away from wedding joy – they’ll splice timelines until you can’t remember which happiness belongs to which sorrow. And never, ever let lost time mix with found hope. The resulting temporal bouquet will make clocks run backward and memories grow like vines until they cover everything in what-might-have-beens.
The last package is different. No label, no shipping manifest. Just my name in familiar handwriting that shimmers like heat waves. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper thin as lost time, lies a small box that smells of summer and sparklers. A note reads: “Found this in your father’s attic. Thought you should have it back. – Mom”
I know what’s inside without opening it. Joy, age seven. The day at the beach when Dad taught me to swim, my laughter bright as sunlight on waves. I’d wrapped it so carefully when he died, stored it with all my other griefs. But this isn’t grief at all.
The joy springs free like a flock of luminescent butterflies, filling the room with the scent of salt air and coconut sunscreen. I hear Dad’s voice calling “Swim to me, sweet pea!” Feel the water holding me up like a thousand gentle hands made of light. The butterflies leave trails of happiness that turn the air into stained glass, each panel showing a different moment of that perfect day.
My inventory system doesn’t have a place for this. Joy doesn’t fit on shelves meant for sorrow. It changes the geometry of the room, turning right angles into curves, making the ceiling bloom with impossible colors. The other griefs respond – some try to hide in corners that suddenly don’t exist, others reach out with tendrils of sadness that turn to wind chimes when joy touches them.
I close early, leaving a note: “No deliveries today. Gone swimming in memories that taste like forever.”
The joy follows me home, a warm breeze that turns streetlights into stars. In my apartment, I open all the windows. Let the grief float out like dandelion seeds, making room for something lighter. Each sorrow that escapes turns into a different kind of music, playing songs that make strangers on the street start dancing. Their shadows tango with memories, their footprints blooming into gardens of maybe and what-if.
Tomorrow there will be more packages, more sorrows to sort and store. But tonight I remember: not everything we keep needs to be heavy. Sometimes the most extraordinary weight is the one that lifts you up, turning grief into butterflies, tears into diamonds, lost moments into songs that teach the city how to dance.
I take the “First” jar down from its shelf, the one filled with my oldest sorrow. Open it slowly, watching as darkness spills out like spilled ink. But when it meets the joy still floating in the air, something extraordinary happens. The darkness and light spiral together, becoming neither grief nor joy but something new – a spiral galaxy in miniature, each star a memory learning how to shine again. It floats between my hands, a universe made of balanced emotion, teaching me that maybe the most extraordinary delivery service isn’t the one that carries grief away, but the one that helps it transform into something beautiful.