I have a trunk. It’s under the layers of old sheets, foam, and springs. It’s just lying there, under my bed. I don’t know how long I’ve had it, but it’s been a while. I can’t remember a single day I didn’t have it. It’s really heavy because I store everything in there. Sometimes, when I pull it out at night, just before I go to bed, I look through its contents. The trunk is full of papers and words and orders that don’t really mean anything, but I keep it all locked up. I don’t know why. I think it’s because I like the way it looks. It’s not a big trunk, but it’s not little either. It’s a medium-sized kind of trunk. I like to run my fingers over its rough surface, to dig my nails into every crack on its face. I swear I can feel it shiver sometimes, but it knows I’d never do anything to break it. It knows I couldn’t.

The trunk is grey. It’s as grey as an elephant’s skin and just as wrinkly as the foreign giant. I hear that other people put stickers on their trunks. They go to an important place, and when they come back to their hotel rooms, they take a sticker that reminds them of that important place, and they slap it on the surface. I don’t know why they do that. I’ve never understood it. A trunk is a trunk. It’s not beautiful, but it’s not ugly enough to cover up. I guess some people will do anything to show off what they have.

When I leave my apartment, I don my coat, its hood trimmed with the finest fur, and walk. I don’t drive or ride. It’s all legs and feet for me. It gives me time to see the world around my apartment. I see other people doing the same. I stare at them. I stare at them from a distance, and I keep staring until they pass me with their heads down and their bodies tucked inside their coats. I entertain myself with fantasies of one of them, just one, looking back at me. In my mind, they smile and ask about my trunk. And I tell them yes, I have a trunk, do you? And they would say why, yes, I do have a trunk. Why don’t you tell me about yours? But I have yet to see the day that happens. For some reason, I keep waiting.

I shuffle through today’s thin crowd. When I turn my head, I see others still driving and riding. They look like they’re having a good time. I wonder if any of them have a trunk under their bed at home. I wonder what it would look like when they pull it out at night, how it would sound as it clicks open, what would be inside. I see a woman in a red truck at a stoplight. I stop walking, and I stare. Her brown hair is tucked back into a ponytail. She’s got this serious look on her face as she drums her fingers on her steering wheel. Why is that? People like her are supposed to smile. She doesn’t see me staring. Perhaps she doesn’t want to look. So I wave my arms, and when that doesn’t work, I start to yell. I yell at her from the sidewalk. I ask her where is her trunk? What does she keep under her bed, in her room, in her apartment, cut off from the rest of the world without any hope of letting light shed upon what she refuses to see? Does she even want to know what I keep hidden? Does she want to know what’s in that elephant-grey trunk underneath layers of old sheets, foam, and springs? Maybe she doesn’t want to know about mine, but what if it’s her lover’s? What if she gives birth one day to a child like me, and it locks itself in its room for a lifetime? Will she even knock to see if it’s okay? Will she test the waters to make sure her child doesn’t get swept out to sea? Or will she watch her baby sink before she leaps in?

When the light turns green, she drives off.

I have a wife, too. She’s pretty, I think. Nobody asks about her though. She doesn’t come to their minds. And I don’t talk about her either. It’s not like it’s real touchy; it’s just that I can’t see either of us lasting too much longer with that trunk in my room.