In This Box

In this box rests fifty-two years of happiness and pain in hard, gray granules, heavier than you would think—it’s dust after all—tucked on the top shelf, above the Library of America editions and travel guides and picture frames. I made a satchel to cover it. Shiny black fabric laced with bright purple thread, brighter than you would expect, someday I’ll iron on patches with rainbows and butterflies and pink-and-red hearts. In this box, all the worry ends. The anxiety and fear and dread is all gone and all that’s left is everything that can’t be taken away. The real stuff. In this box I pour not tears, but whiskey and gasoline and fire. In this box I see a million chances, a million dead-ends. In this box everything stops being real, stops really mattering. Starts feeling ephemeral and fleeting and free. And freedom is all we really need. And when I see or hear of disaster, potential apocalypse—tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, living hell—I take quick inventory of what I could carry. What I would need to stay alive, to survive. Before clothes or food or water, I choose this box and I’ll keep it with me for all the days I have left, whether they be in pleasure or struggle or devastation. In this box is all that means anything, this box full of nothing.