Deaccession

There had to be a reason the exhibit failed.

She’d come here to find out why.

All the notes were laid out before her. Artifacts were catalogued. The meeting minutes were in the binder at her feet.

This wasn’t the first failed exhibit. The museum had absorbed losses before—quiet closures, polite departures—but this failure had weight. The kind that altered floor plans. The kind that changed what could survive. The museum might not make it this time. At the very least, it would be changed.

The notes and messages were lined up in chronological order, just the way she’d learned to do it. Each one tagged with a category heading. Random Thoughts. Possible Future. Deep Dive. Architecture. Miscellaneous.

She checked each one against the records and secondary log. Confirmed provenance had been documented and was clear. Accession errors? Holes in the timeline? But she’d worked on this herself!

What is this not telling me? And why?

She noticed some items were not lining up. The handwriting was unfamiliar on this one. The content was similar but the tone had changed. Certain phrases were softened. Others reversed. The meaning had shifted without announcement.

Without the proper protocol.
No change-orders.
No memos.
Just a revision of history she wasn’t invited to attend.

Who made these changes? When?

Some of the cards had been bent. Fragile notes from the past, now coming apart at the seams. Fragments of the past now broken.

Someone had been careless.

She scanned the table for the antique card with the anatomical heart. It should have been there. The exhibit had been built around it—or so she remembered.

She checked the inventory again.

The card wasn’t listed.

She paused, unsettled not by its absence, but by the implication: that something she was certain had anchored the collection was now being treated as though it had never existed at all.

It hadn’t disappeared. According to the archive, it had never been?

But it had spoken to her. She remembered the voice clear as day, though now it was beginning to sound muffled. Distant. Like an idea, not a promise.

Too many holes to fill. Too much space where artifacts used to be. The name plates for some pieces were missing. The last room, where the pedestal was to hold the pièce de résistance, was empty. The pedestal sat in the storage closet, tucked away as if it had never been needed at all.

It wasn’t adding up.

Then she saw it. The brochure. God. It was so obvious. So loud.

Her photograph stared back at her—official, composed, undeniably present. She studied it a beat longer than needed, aware of how presentation shaped reception. She studied the line of her own jaw, the clarity of her eyes. How could the image be so polished when the impact had been so disastrous?

She saw, now, how they’d responded not just to content, but to the figure framed as its guide. They left when faced with something other than what they had curated. She understood then what the archive could not say aloud.

Perhaps the exhibit had failed not because anything was missing—but because what had been shown was misjudged. It had failed to deliver on the unspoken desires of the audience.

She made a note in the margin about alignment. About expectations. Capacity.

Here’s the mixtape.

Blue Flower — Mazzy Star
Don’t Go Back to Rockville — R.E.M.
Allison Road — Gin Blossoms
First Love—Thelma & James
Good Enough—Michael Marcagi
Name — Goo Goo Dolls
A Letter to Elise — The Cure

Here’s what you may have missed:

Every week, Stories from the Jukebox gives us a prompt. Here’s my most recent submission:

🎶 This week’s Jukebox:

📼 From the Jukebox Vault:

🪑 Southern Writers’ Guild:
Y’all come hang out with MJ, Rick, and me over at the Guild—I’d love for you to check out this piece:

Real Life Porch Talkn

🎥 SWaG Feature of the Week:
If you haven’t read (or listened to) the Rooster, you’ve got to check it out:

The Rooster