𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐍:

I spotted you at the bottom of the box overflowing with matches and playing cards and rubber bands and chargers to phones long since discarded.

There were thumbtacks, bandaids, a small allen wrench, loose batteries, and three tubes of unopened ChapStick.

The box was a catchall at my granny’s estate sale for things that, alone, warranted neither box nor bid.

You were errantly added to the mix, Tablespoon.
You, sterling clad and flower-etched.

Perhaps it’s because you lost your shine.
Neglect has a way of doing that.

But I knew what lay beneath.

All alone, and no longer part of a set, I brought you home and set about returning you to your former glory.

Kindred spirits, we, I understood all too well how it feels to lose your sparkle, to be cast aside and undervalued.

You bore the marks of years of service 𝑎𝑛𝑑 mishandling, but I knew you still had life left in you.

So I took you home and worked on you little by little.

Not all at once.

Just enough each time to see a bit more shine come through.

Now you live in my drawer.
Not part of a set, no, but not alone either.

You stir my coffee in the mornings, sweetening what starts out bitter.

You’ve carried medicine to our mouths on sick days, steady and careful like it matters, because it does.

You showed me there’s more than one way to peel an orange. That the gentler way can still get the job done.

You’ve tasted everything with me: the meals that worked, the ones that didn’t, the soup I scorched, the frosting I mastered.

I never forget where I found you. All those things in that box that were useful once, and maybe still are.

Perhaps they just got overlooked, or taken for granted. It doesn’t take much to end up there, in the box of forgotten things.

To lose your shine. To be tossed aside.
I know something about that.

But I also know this: how something can be picked up again, tended to, and put back to use.

How it doesn’t have to be what it once was to still matter.

You are not part of a set anymore, Tablespoon. Neither am I.

But, 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙, look at us!
Serving differently, but shining once again.

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?
~ 𝐈𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐚𝐡 𝟒𝟑:𝟏𝟗