The Collection

I sat there staring at the vase for the better part of half an hour. The layers were distinct, seeming to sway with the room. The bottom layer was mostly cheaper and synthetic corks, the sort of thing that fueled fervent and youthful works, the sort of writing that came together halfway through a bottle, a third of a way through a pack of cigarettes. The next layer had a bunch of champagne corks from New Years Eve and the ones from a case of cabernet my agent bought me after The New Yorker accepted a short story. After that the caps from several bottles of Scotch, a different one every week. They helped write the novel that eventually got me a deal with Vintage. The Scotch caps faded into more cab corks. No white corks though, I don't like white wine. The top layer was the one where there was no longer a correlation between bottles and certain chapters. Then the was the cork at the top that I had marked with a red Sharpie.
It was there to remind me: "This is the one that caused you to miss a deadline".