photography #725 [ Essay]

[ The Dusty Drawer of Time ]

A person always has a place where they keep their memories. Sometimes they linger behind a veil of mist, like a ghost of the past—formless, distant, a whisper barely heard. Sometimes they slumber beneath heavy winter snow, their warmth hidden beneath a cold, unbroken silence. And sometimes, they rest in a dusty drawer, folded inside an old, yellowed letter, waiting to be remembered. No memory ever truly vanishes; it simply retreats, breathing softly in the dim light of forgotten corners.

Time moves forward, indifferent to the weight of what it carries, yet we, fragile creatures that we are, gather our past like delicate glass trinkets, afraid to drop them, afraid to let them shatter into irretrievable pieces. We reach for old journals, run our fingers over brittle pages, hold fading photographs to the light as if searching for a glimpse of who we once were. That smile captured in a worn-out Photo—was it truly ours? Or is it just a reflection of a time we can never return to? The past is cruel in its beauty, always just close enough to touch, yet forever out of reach.

Some people hoard their memories, fearing that without them, they will cease to exist. Others bury them deep, hoping that time will be kind enough to erase what their hearts cannot bear to carry. But memory is relentless, stubborn as an old friend who refuses to leave. It seeps through the cracks of the present, creeping in through the scent of rain on dry pavement, the creak of a wooden floor, the echo of a melody drifting from a distant window. And just like that, the past comes knocking—not asking, not warning, only reminding.

Without realizing it, we find ourselves reaching for that dusty drawer, pulling out the remnants of yesterday. We run our hands over the ink-stained pages of a forgotten letter, reading words that were once urgent, once filled with longing. The voice behind them may have faded, but the weight of those words lingers, untouched by time. The fears, the joys, the quiet sorrows—they remain, tucked away in the deepest corners of the soul, waiting for the right moment to awaken.

Perhaps a drawer is not just a drawer. Perhaps it is a graveyard of whispers, a museum of love and loss, a time capsule of everything we once were and everything we can never be again. A drawer... is perhaps as sorrowful as a forgotten old letter or an old photograph...

Essay & Photo: Mustafa Nazif Duran