The Box

Perhaps my writing is like those conversations you have at a diner at 11PM: you're at the bar top, waiting for your coffee, or eggs and bacon, and someone comes and sits next to you when you didn't really want them to. They're frumpy, with a hat on backwards, and you wonder where they came from and what made them come here so late. The pure audacity to infringe on your personal space, but you're intrigued anyway.

Perhaps conversations are like a box. For me, I go at them with kitchen scissors and try to open them up, when the job really required a knife. I can't get inside it. The tape has been carefully arranged so that is covers every crevice, every edge - the very thing keeping everything inside is what I seek to destroy. I want to know more.

Perhaps getting to know people is like unwinding a long spool of tape. It gets stuck to your fingers, and you want to peel it off, but it's there, on top of your skin and either irritating or somehow funny. You laugh, or seethe. You like them, or you don't.

Perhaps love is like a box. What's that Edgar Allan Poe story, with the beating heart? That's true love, when it's out of their body, sealed somewhere with the same tape you fought so hard to rip away. You want more, you want to get to the moment when you know what's inside and can be done with the process of peeling back the layers.

I believe that some people are unknowable. But then, maybe we all are. The person who sat next to you a the bar top is unknowable, but maybe they are a box, and it just depends on how much effort you're willing to expend, opening them up.