For a while, we put our problems in a box in the attic.
We'd visit, now and again, to deposit an annoyance or two.
But then we started adding bigger problems, and space became tight.
We bought a trunk.  It was cedar, designed to keep the moths (and our consciousness) out.

One day you went up there, and discovered I'd taken up nearly the whole trunk
with a gray sweater, full of holes, coming undone at the seams.
You wanted to know how it got there— you'd never seen it before.
I didn't exactly remember putting it there, at least not all at once.  
It would explain its tattered nature.
You told me to just get rid of it.  It's all worn out, you said.  What's the use keeping it?
I told you I was still working on finding all of the pieces.
You acquiesced.  You usually do.

For a while, the trunk was all we needed.
I left the house and came back with more pieces for that gray sweater.
It eventually became more of a blanket, but the trunk still kept it in, though the wool
would threaten to spill out in tufts whenever I opened the lid.

Eventually, it overflowed the trunk, creeping out onto the floor, down the attic steps.  Into the house.
You asked if I'd found all the pieces yet.
No, I haven't.  The bigger it gets, the more holes it sprouts.
I start to wonder if I've been making new holes to patch old ones, taking thread from the seams,
and leaving the edges ragged, fraying.
I'm fraying.
And neither one of us is good at sewing.