I have always been taken by pretty boxes.
Jewelry boxes, music boxes, dress shoeboxes, all strewn around my childhood bedroom. Some travel with me when I move, as if they are valuables.
There’s so much potential in my boxes. Anything could be inside. I never open them for fear of finding their insides inferior to their outsides.
His words are pretty boxes. I’m afraid to look inside them, afraid to learn that they’re empty. How could containers so beautiful be void?
So I’ll pretend there are stars inside. That one day my lost boy will come home, my boxes will burst at the seams, and my room will become the Magic Kingdom.
I understand him, because I’ve given pretty boxes too, decorated with my best intentions. They’re cheap to make and received so well. Vouchers for love.
The boxes are piling up. Taking up space in my room, my head. I’m tripping on them on the way to the bathroom at night. How long can I keep my boxes?
How long can I delay the death of my fantasy? The clutter and dissonance are slowly choking me. I cannot fit any more boxes in here.
Desperation gives way to Reason, and she tells me there are no placeholders for love.
A thing is a thing and its box is void. A man is as he does.
I am realizing that I must leave Neverland and move into reality somewhere, before I lose sight of the exit.