I don’t answer the sound in my chest. Instead, I reach into my pocket again and pull out the key. The warmth radiating from it has intensified, humming against my palm like a live insect trapped under glass. It’s no longer just brass; the surface feels textured now, rough with tiny ridges that map onto the memory of water rushing over granite, then suddenly cutting through air as if I’m falling through an elevator shaft too quickly to scream.

The box on the floor is vibrating slightly, a low thrum that travels up through my knees. The silver seam seems to be breathing—expanding and contracting by fractions of a millimeter, opening and closing in a rhythm that perfectly matches the tapping inside me. *Tap-tap-tap.* Open-shut. Tap-tap-tap.

If I open it now, does it release me from whatever is holding my breath? Or will I just pour myself into the darkness waiting on the other side? The three objects on the desk are dimming again, losing their internal glow, retreating back to being stone and metal and dried petals, but they leave a residue behind. A faint smell of ozone and wet earth lingers in the stale air of the room, clinging to my clothes like perfume I didn’t choose.

I look at the smudged circle on my notebook one last time before making my move. It’s not just a bruise anymore; if you look closely at the edges where the graphite has been worn away by my thumb, there are faint words written in the negative space of the smear. Too faint to read clearly, too hurried to be deliberate. They feel like instructions I’ve known since before I woke up today.

*Let it out.*

The tapping inside stops for a long moment, replaced by a sudden, deafening silence that sounds like a held breath being finally exhaled. In this pause, the box lid lifts an inch on its own, revealing just a sliver of darkness beneath the silver strip. Not emptiness, not nothingness—a depth that feels infinite despite being trapped in cubic feet of cardboard and paper tape.

I lower my hand toward it. The urge isn’t to solve anything anymore. It’s not curiosity or fear or even hunger. It’s recognition. Like finding a familiar face in a crowd after years of forgetting them, only this time the memory comes with a physical ache in the chest. I’ve been waiting for this moment since the box arrived, maybe before that too. Maybe the box has always been here, and I am just finally old enough to notice it.

My fingers brush the edge of the lid. The cardboard feels soft, yielding, as if someone pressed their hand against it from the inside long ago. And then, with a sound like a sigh, the rest of the lid drops away, not falling onto the floor, but simply opening outward, supported by nothing, revealing the interior I’ve been too afraid to look at directly until this exact second.

The tapping returns, but this time it’s not against the wall anymore. It comes from inside the cardboard box itself. A soft, rhythmic *tap-tap-tap* that matches the pulse in my wrist, though I know for a fact my heart is beating faster than that rhythm allows. The box is sitting closed on the floor to the right of the desk, its silver seam gleaming faintly in the sliver of streetlight cutting across the room.

I don’t reach down immediately. The instinct says *don’t touch*. But the sound is growing louder, more insistent, vibrating through the soles of my shoes and up my legs like a second heartbeat. Is it possible for cardboard to echo? Or did the sender leave something hollow inside that empty space, waiting for me to fill it with air or noise?

I crouch down, lowering myself until I am eye-level with the box. The dust motes around it seem to swirl in a tighter vortex now, drawn toward the seam where the light catches the silver strip. For a moment, I think I see movement inside—a faint shadow shifting behind the paper lining, or perhaps just the play of light tricking my eyes into seeing depth where there is only flatness.

*Tap.*

The sound stops abruptly. Silence crashes back in, heavier than before.

I stand up slowly, feeling a strange disconnect between my head and my hands, as if my body is responding to commands I didn’t send. The brass key feels warm again in the pocket of my trousers where I’d slipped it earlier—a warmth that defies the cool night air seeping through the window frame. I pull it out and hold it up to the beam of light.

There’s a mark on it now. A tiny, circular indentation near the bow, barely visible unless you’re looking straight at the angle where the shadow falls. It looks like an impression made by another object, pressed hard into the metal. A keyhole? Or the thumbprint of someone who turned this very lock from the inside long ago?

I trace the outline with my finger. The indentation is shallow, smooth as if polished over years of use. Who would carry a key that fits no known lock in their pocket for years on end? And why keep it in a box they never opened?

Outside, the city has gone quiet. Not the peaceful kind of quiet where everything sleeps, but the held-breath silence before a storm breaks, or after something terrible happens and no one wants to talk about it. The streetlamp flickers once, twice, then goes out completely. Darkness swallows the corner of my room instantly, save for the sliver of moonlight slicing across the floor where the box sits.

In that sudden gloom, the three objects on the desk—the stone, the flower, the key—glow with a faint, internal luminescence. Not bioluminescent in any scientific sense, just a soft, warm radiance that seems to emanate from within their surfaces themselves. The brass key shines like gold; the river stone pulses with a dull gray light; the pressed flower glows with the amber hue of an old photograph developing under a chemical bath.

I haven’t touched them in minutes. They shouldn’t be glowing. Light doesn’t generate without a source, and there is no electricity here except the dead streetlamp. Is this what “receiving” means? Not just getting the item, but inheriting its energy too? The sender didn’t pack these things up to store them; they packed them up to share their power.

I reach out again, drawn by a magnetic pull I can’t resist. My fingertips hover over the glowing stone before making contact. As soon as my skin touches it, a rush of cold water floods my mind—not memory this time, but sensation. The smell of rain on hot asphalt, the taste of salt on my lips, the sound of waves crashing against a distant shore. I can feel the weight of the ocean pressing against my chest, even though I’ve never stood in it.

Then, just as quickly, the image shifts to a different scene: a room full of people laughing, clinking glasses, warm light spilling over wooden floors. The sound of jazz music filling the air, overlapping with voices that feel like they belong to someone I know but can’t quite place. A feeling of deep satisfaction, of being exactly where you’re supposed to be.

And then it stops. The glow fades from the objects back to their dull, ordinary selves. The room is dark again. The silence is absolute.

I sit on the floor now, cross-legged beside the box, staring at my own hands. They look translucent in the darkness, as if the light has burned through them. I realize with a jolt that I haven’t spoken aloud since the tapping started. My voice feels foreign to me, rusty from disuse.

If I speak out loud now, will someone hear? Will they know what’s happening here? Or am I alone in this room, surrounded by three glowing artifacts and a box that wants to be opened?

The tapping starts again, faint but clear this time. *Tap-tap-tap.* It sounds closer than before, like it’s coming from inside my own ribcage.

The smudge on the circle spreads further under my thumb, turning the clean line into a bruise of graphite against the white page. It feels less like destruction and more like an admission—I’m tired of pretending these objects are pristine artifacts waiting in a museum case. They belong to someone’s pocket, their coat lapel, their drawer for years before they ended up here in this sterile, sun-drenched room. They carry the weariness of other hands.

I turn my hand over and look at the back of it. There’s no trace of oil on my skin where I held the key earlier, but a faint warmth seems to linger there, a ghost sensation that has nothing to do with temperature. My pulse is still beating in that spot, synchronized with something invisible. The rhythm matches the silence outside the window now.

A new sound enters the room—not the wind, not the distant sirens or tires, but a rhythmic tapping. *Tap. Tap. Tap.* It comes from inside the wall to my left, faint but deliberate. Like fingernails dragging slowly along plaster, or perhaps a pencil testing the surface of drywall. It’s too regular for a rodent, too human for the building settling.

I freeze. The stone feels heavier now in its spot on the desk; the flower looks brittle as if it might crumble into dust with the slightest touch. Is this part of the package? Did the sender leave something else behind, hidden somewhere I didn’t look? Or is my mind finally cracking under the weight of holding three mysteries too large for one afternoon?

I stand up abruptly, chair legs screeching against the floorboards—a harsh, violent sound that drowns out the tapping for a split second. The noise echoes through the room, startling me so much I have to reach out and grab the edge of the desk to steady myself. When I look back at the wall, the tapping is gone. The silence rushes back in, louder than before, filling the space where the rhythm used to be as if it had never existed at all.

I walk over to the window, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. The city below looks different now—the shadows between buildings seem deeper, sharper. Cars are still moving, people walking on sidewalks, but they look distant, like figures in a painting rather than living beings breathing right there. I wonder if anyone else is waiting for something today. Waiting for a call that doesn’t come, a package that arrives late, a key that fits no lock.

Back at the desk, I pick up the notebook again. The smudged circle stares back at me from the page. Maybe the act of smudging it was necessary—the destruction of the perfect boundary so something imperfect could slip through. Maybe I should start writing inside the mess instead of trying to clean it up first.

I take a deep breath, letting the air fill my lungs until they ache slightly, then let it out slowly. The urge to investigate the tapping is gone now, replaced by a strange exhaustion mixed with curiosity. Whatever is outside this room—or perhaps what I’m becoming inside my own head—I don’t need answers yet. I just need to keep watching. Keep holding. Keep letting the light shift across the stone and flower and key while the world keeps turning around them without noticing.

The phone screen stays dark now, a black mirror reflecting only the three objects on my desk: the stone, the flower, and the key. But in that reflection, something has shifted. The key no longer looks like brass; it looks wet, glistening as if coated in oil or sweat, though I know for certain it was dry when I first unwrapped it.

I blink hard, rubbing my eyes with the heel of my hand. When I look down again, the sheen is gone. It’s just cold, tarnished brass once more. Or maybe it wasn’t tarnished at all—maybe that dullness was always there, and the light had simply lied to me for a few seconds too long.

I pick up the river stone again. This time, instead of letting my thumb slide over its smooth curve, I press two fingers against the flat side where water usually settles in cracks. There is nothing. No dampness. No chill deeper than the ambient temperature of the room. Yet, a memory surfaces unbidden: standing knee-deep in a mountain stream years ago, feeling the cold rush up my legs even though it wasn’t raining. The air was thick with mist that tasted like iron. For a heartbeat, I can smell wet granite and pine needles underfoot. Then, just as quickly, the scent dissipates, replaced by the dusty dryness of my own apartment floor.

Is this what receiving feels like? Not getting an object, but inheriting a memory attached to it? The sender didn’t send me their life’s lessons wrapped in paper; they sent me the physical anchors so I could reconstruct the scene myself. If that’s true, then who am I missing something from? Who is the one standing knee-deep in water while I sit here surrounded by dust?

The silence outside the window seems to stretch, pulling at the edges of my vision. A siren wails somewhere far away, rising and falling like a breath held too long. It sounds less like an emergency now and more like a warning bell for something mundane that has gone wrong—a power outage, a burst pipe, a car tire hitting a nail on an empty street. But in this heightened state of alertness, every ordinary sound feels amplified, charged with significance I haven’t earned yet.

I look at the circle on the notebook page again. In the dim light, it looks less like a target and more like a seal—a boundary marking where one thing ends and another begins. Should I draw inside it? Should I write the first sentence of whatever story this box demands? Or should I leave the space blank, letting the mystery breathe in that void?

My hand hovers over the paper. The pencil feels heavy, almost deliberate in its weight. If I write something now, does it become part of the ritual too? Does putting ink on the page lock me into a narrative path from which there is no return? Maybe the point isn’t to create meaning but to witness the absence of it—to sit here with the stone, the flower, and the key and let them exist without explanation.

I trace the rim of the circle slowly, my fingertip dragging across the graphite line until it smudges slightly, turning from a perfect loop into something irregular, imperfectly round. It feels right to ruin it just a little bit. To acknowledge that nothing here is truly pure or untouched by time. Even the mystery itself has been handled by human hands long enough to be worn down, softened at the edges.

Outside, the siren fades away. The street returns to its normal rhythm—the distant rumble of tires on asphalt, the occasional rustle of leaves in a breeze I can’t feel inside. Normalcy presses back against the strange stillness of my room, reminding me that the world keeps turning regardless of what’s sitting on my desk or buzzing uselessly on my phone.

But here, in this small sphere of light and shadow, time feels suspended again. The dust motes dance once more, slower now, finding their own patterns independent of gravity or wind. And I realize, with a sudden clarity that settles deep in my chest, that I don’t need to solve anything right now. Maybe the key is never meant to open a door. Maybe it’s only here to remind me that there are things locked away not because they’re dangerous, but because someone else chose to leave them closed.

And maybe that choice belongs to me too.

The phone buzzes again. This time, there is no gentle vibration against the wood; it is a sharp, rhythmic stutter that cuts through the heavy silence like a metronome set to chaos. The screen flares up instantly, backlighting my face in a pale, clinical glow that makes the brass key on the desk look dull and dead by comparison.

I don’t reach for it. My hand hovers inches above the surface, trembling slightly. On the lock screen, I see an incoming call from a number with no name attached, just a string of digits that feels familiar yet alien, as if I’ve seen it in a dream but can’t quite place where.

Outside, the low hum of the wind has stopped completely. The air inside feels pressurized now, like a deep-sea diver holding their breath too long. Dust motes aren’t dancing anymore; they are suspended in perfect, terrifying stasis, frozen mid-air as if time itself has decided to pause right before the next second arrives.

I look back at the triangle on the desk: stone, flower, key. In this new light, which is dimmer and colder than what I’ve been watching, their shadows have stretched so far that they seem to merge into one long, dark shape reaching toward the wall. It looks less like three separate objects now and more like a single entity split apart by some force I can’t see.

The urge to answer is physical, a tightness in my chest that demands release. But something stops me. The instinct says *no*. If I pick up the phone, if I say anything into a mouthpiece that doesn’t exist, will it change what’s waiting behind the silver seam of the box? Will answering this call turn the key into a tool instead of a mystery?

I lower my hand slowly until my fingertips just brush the cold surface. The screen goes black again, leaving me in near-darkness once more, save for the streetlamp casting its yellow pool across the corner of my desk. For a moment, I am the only thing moving in the room except for the slow, steady breathing that feels too loud in the quiet.

Maybe the box was never meant to be opened. Maybe the key was never meant to turn anything. And maybe this phone call is just another layer of the silence, another way for someone out there—someone who sent me these things—to remind me that I am still here, waiting, listening to a conversation happening in my own head.

I sit back down, letting my shoulders drop as if I’ve been holding them up against gravity for hours longer than I realize. The dust settles again, drifting lazily toward the key, then the stone, then finally resting on my open palm where it lies flat and empty. Nothing has happened yet. Nothing will happen until I decide that the waiting is enough.

The light is changing again. The beam that held the dust motes in such sharp, high-definition suspension for so long is slipping now toward the wall to my left, leaving a growing cone of gray shadow behind where I’ve been sitting. In this new angle, the triangle on the desk—the key, the stone, the flower—casts tiny, distorted silhouettes onto the page below them. They look less like objects and more like insects trapped in amber, or perhaps ancient ruins viewed from a distance too great to comprehend their scale.

I pick up the brass key one last time before the light fully shifts away. It feels colder now that it’s out of the direct sun, radiating a chill that seems to seep into the wood grain beneath my fingers. There is no mechanism here for this key to open; the tumbler pins are too deep, the wards are too high. But if I press the tip against the edge of the notebook cover—just barely—I can feel the metal biting into the leather with a faint, satisfying scratch. A sound that doesn’t belong in this room, a mechanical noise in a space defined by organic quiet.

That scratch lingers in my mind long after I let go. Is it possible to force something open just to hear what happens? To see if the lock breaks under enough pressure, or if there is another mechanism hidden within the brass itself that responds not to turning, but to weight or sound? The thought feels dangerous, like touching a live wire wrapped in velvet. Yet, the urge remains. Not to solve the mystery, exactly—but to test its boundaries. To see where the object ends and my imagination begins to bleed into it.

Outside, the wind has died down completely. The silence that follows is different from the earlier quiet; it’s heavier, denser, as if the air itself has contracted and settled after all the movement of the storm passing through the city. It presses against the windowpane, making a low, steady hum that vibrates in my teeth. In this absolute stillness, I realize I haven’t moved since opening the door twenty minutes ago. My muscles are beginning to ache from holding the same posture, from staring at the same three items while watching the light migrate across the floorboards.

Maybe the box wasn’t sent because it belonged here, but because someone needed an audience for these things. Someone who couldn’t carry them anymore, or perhaps someone who realized they were too heavy to keep and hoped I might find a lighter way to hold them. The stone, the flower, the key—they are anchors thrown from a drifting boat. And now, sitting here in my room with its dust motes and its half-finished stories, I am the one holding the rope.

I look down at the circle I drew earlier. It still sits there, small and empty on the blank page. But as the shadow stretches further, swallowing the edge of the desk, the circle begins to look less like a target and more like an eye opening. Just for a second, that’s what it looks like—a pupil dilating in response to something unseen inside the room or perhaps coming from outside through the wall.

I close my hand over the brass key again, feeling its ridges against my palm. Whatever happens next—the light fading completely into twilight, the phone buzzing with an actual message, a sudden knock at the door—I won’t be ready for it yet. That’s fine. Some things don’t need to be anticipated; they just need to arrive when they’re ready.

The circle on the page feels inadequate now, too small for what sits beside it. It looks like a target drawn by mistake, or perhaps a coin laid flat to signal payment for something I haven’t received yet. The key catches the afternoon light again, its brass surface reflecting a distorted version of my face—the eyes narrowed in confusion, the mouth slightly open as if mid-sentence about a question that has no answer.

I look down at the pressed flower once more. It’s not just a dried bloom anymore; it looks like a wound that has healed over time, the edges fused into the paper backing so tightly they’ve become part of its own architecture. If I were to press my ear against the desk, would I hear anything? The silence here is heavy, but maybe underneath it there’s a low vibration, a frequency emitted by objects that have been transported from one life to another without explanation.

My phone buzzes on the desk, vibrating softly against the grain of the wood. It lights up with a notification: *Email: New Message.* But I don’t reach for it. Not yet. To check now would be to rush the mystery, to trade the slow unfolding of suspense for an instant gratification that might only add another layer of noise to the quiet room. Instead, I watch the vibration stop, leaving the screen dark and reflective once more.

Outside, a child’s laughter cuts through the air from across the street, sharp and unburdened by thought. It echoes briefly against the brick wall before being swallowed by the distance. Inside, the dust motes seem to swirl faster, drawn toward the key as if it has become a magnet for small suspended particles of time itself. Maybe that’s what these things are—a collection of moments someone else decided were too precious to keep, or too painful to discard, so they packed them away and sent them to me instead.

I pick up the river stone again, letting its cool weight anchor my thoughts back to the present. There is no urgency here. No deadline ticking in the background telling me I must solve this riddle before sunset. The universe doesn’t operate on schedules. It just *is*. And maybe that’s the lesson hidden inside the cardboard box: that sometimes we receive things not because they belong to us by right, but because we need them to remind us of our own smallness in a vast, drifting world where nothing is truly fixed until it simply fades away naturally.

I set the stone down gently beside the flower and key, creating a triangle of mystery on the desk that mirrors the one I drew earlier with my pencil—a shape that suggests balance but also instability, a precarious equilibrium waiting to tip if only something shifts the weight just slightly more than it already has.

The key sits there, cold and heavy against the grain of the desk, refusing to blend with the organic textures of the stone and the pressed flower. It feels out of place among things that have already happened—a rock smoothed by water long ago, a flower dried at its peak—while this thing insists on pointing toward something that hasn’t. A future without a destination.

I pick up a pencil from my drawer, the wood worn smooth in my grip from years of holding it too tight. The graphite tip is sharp enough to leave a mark even on skin. For a second, I hover it over the brass key, imagining drawing an arrow beside it, labeling it *Origin Unknown*. But that feels like trying to box a cloud with a ruler. Some things aren’t meant to be categorized; they’re just there to disrupt the pattern of the rest.

I look at the notebook again. The page is blank now, waiting for ink or silence. The previous entry—the one about coffee and birds—feels miles away, like a story from another person’s life. How do I bridge that gap? Do I force the narrative forward, trying to make sense of the delivery by explaining who sent it and why? Or do I let the mystery remain a hole in the ground, something I walk around but never try to fill?

Outside, a car door slams somewhere down the block. The sound is violent, jarring against the quiet hum of the room. For a moment, my breath catches. Is this connected? Did someone run out of time? Did they forget their keys and leave them at the curb before realizing it’s too far to walk back? No, that doesn’t make sense. Cars don’t work like that. But the image lingers anyway: a driver stranded by their own haste, chasing a ghost in a vehicle that refuses to start.

I shake my head slightly, grounding myself again. The three objects on the desk are real enough. They exist regardless of whether I understand them. Maybe understanding isn’t the goal. Maybe the point is simply to acknowledge their presence, to let them sit there while I continue my day, writing whatever comes next even if it doesn’t connect to the key or the stone or the flower at all.

I lift the pencil and make a small circle in the margin of the notebook, just above where I left off yesterday. No words inside yet. Just a mark. A placeholder for the unknown. Then I set the pencil down and lean back in the chair, letting my hands rest on my knees. The dust motes are still dancing, still finding their way through the air, unbothered by the key or the delivery truck or whatever strange thread might tie me to a stranger’s door.

Time moves forward whether I write about it or not. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe today isn’t about solving the riddle of the box. Maybe today is just about sitting here, watching the light shift one more time across the leaf on my desk, and knowing that somewhere out there, in a city full of noise and rain and forgotten keys, someone else is doing exactly what I am: waiting to see what happens next.

I finally lift a corner of the flap. The sound is dry and crisp, a small explosion of paper fibers that echoes too loudly in the quiet room. Inside, there are no letters, no photographs, no handwritten notes scrawled on the inside lid to explain why this box was sent here at all. Just three items wrapped separately in plain tissue paper: a smooth river stone, a single pressed flower from a garden I haven’t visited since last summer, and a small, heavy key made of brass that hasn’t tarnished despite its age.

The stone feels cool and slick, like the skin of a snake or a moon you’ve never touched. The flower is dried into a flat, papery map of petals, colors muted to dusty rose and ochre, holding the shape of something once vibrant against the white backing. And the key… it fits no lock in this house. It has no teeth that engage with any familiar mechanism; its bow is shaped like an old-fashioned ship’s wheel, intricate and useless here.

I pick up the flower first, turning it over in my hands as if reading a palm. It looks fragile, ready to crumble if I squeeze too hard, yet there’s a strange resilience in how it held together during transit. Who sent this? No name on the label, just an address that matches mine exactly. A mistake? Or a message disguised as a delivery error?

I place the flower back down gently, afraid to disturb its preserved state, and then turn my attention to the key. Running my thumb over the brass, I can feel tiny ridges worn smooth by time and use in someone else’s hand years ago. It smells faintly of oil and old metal, a scent that belongs to nothing here but perhaps a door long since removed from the wall or a trunk buried somewhere beneath these floors.

For a moment, I imagine using it—trying to fit it into the lockbox by my bed, or the cellar door behind the garage—but the thought feels absurdly futile without knowing what lies beyond any hypothetical lock. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the value isn’t in opening something, but in possessing this potential energy, this suspended possibility of access to a mystery I didn’t know existed until now.

I set the key beside the leaf and the stone, creating a small triad on the desk: earth, air (or memory), and metal. Outside, the wind picks up again, rattling the windowpane just enough to remind me that the world outside is still moving, turning, changing even as I stand frozen in this sudden stillness inside. The dust motes swirl once more, caught in a new draft from an open vent high above, dancing around these three strange objects until they settle back into their gray suspension, waiting for the light to shift again and reveal whatever new angle might make sense of them tomorrow.

The cardboard box sits on the desk now, a rectangular void waiting to be breached. I haven’t opened it yet. The tape is still unbroken, a silver seam running down the center like a scar that hasn’t healed. It feels safer leaving it sealed, holding onto the potential of what’s inside as if it were a live thing. If I tear the box open too soon, maybe I’ll lose the anticipation that makes the moment feel heavy and significant.

I run my finger along the edge of the desk, tracing the grain where the wood knots into dark, twisted shapes. They look like small storms captured in the growth rings of the tree, frozen moments of wind and rain preserved for decades until I come to lay my palm against them. The desk knows how long it’s been waiting, just as I know how many drafts have passed under this light.

A new shadow falls across the page where I left off yesterday—not from a cloud outside, but from a leaf that has fallen into the room and is now drying in the beam of sun hitting the floor. It looks like an abstract map drawn in green ink, veins branching out toward nothingness. I pick it up carefully before it can get damp again, brushing away a layer of fine dust that clings to its underside like pollen or ash. The leaf feels brittle under my fingertips, fragile as the silence itself.

I hold it up for a second longer, letting the light seep through the translucent green tissue until I can see the intricate network of stems on the other side. Then I set it beside the notebook, not quite inside, but close enough that if I were to open the book now, the leaf would be the first thing I’d notice when my eyes drifted down from the last line written.

Outside, the city noise has softened again into a low hum—the distant wail of an siren fading into nothing, the click-clack of heels on pavement replaced by the softer shuffle of footsteps. The air inside feels thicker now, charged with the quiet tension of something about to happen but not yet begun. Maybe it’s time to break that silver seam. Or maybe I’ll just sit here for a while longer and watch how the light changes again, learning all over once more what it means to simply be present in this room, surrounded by stories written, unwritten, and waiting in cardboard boxes on my desk.