Love Story

Leaving the Garden - The Boy Inside the Box

I put you in a box the other day.  I put you in a box inside my head.  I heard people do that with bad memories.  I wasn’t quite sure how it would work, but it was easy in the end.  I covered the outside with things I think you like, so that you’d be happy in there.  The problem is, I don’t really know who you are, so I selected from the few photographs you’d sent me, of your nephew, of your friends, of the day we spent together in Zanzibar.  But I’m afraid I had to cut out your face, as the whole point was to forget you.

I made sure they were pressed carefully, collaged, over the outsides and over the rectangular rim.  Oddly, the paper bulged out a little, as if poorly stuck, and the corners were not sharp.  I made the box quite small, to more easily put it in the back of my mind, and you were correspondingly little to fit into it.

I had to pick you up in my large, soft hands, and wrap you in a blanket, beige, right up to your neck.  Fitting, perhaps, as it is only your face I remember.  I placed you softly inside with a cushion and a lamp and a book.  You were smiling, I promise.

I put on the lid, collaged with the same three photographs, and wasn’t sure what to do next.  I think I peeked inside to see that you were alright, and then decided that I should wrap my whole creation in brown paper, to seal it up, to cover it completely.  I lifted it gently over to the wall in the room in my mind, took a step back, and felt my missing you subside.

I turned off the light, and closed the door behind me, leaving you in darkness.  As I walked away, vines like serpents grew over the entrance to that far corner of my brain, and moss spread, great creepers wound around it and birds, colourful and singing, perched.  I knew that I would probably never find it again, in all that vastness, through all those leaves and clutching tendrils.  I decided that was a good thing.

And now whenever I think of you, you are mute, and warm, in a box in a room at the end of my mind.  And that makes me happier.

--

I opened the lid of the box this morning and you were gone.  I’d tucked you up so tightly, and made sure you were happy, given you a book and a blanket, shut the door sharply behind me, turned off the light.  How could you have gone?  How could you possibly have escaped into the vastness, crawling through the leaves and tendrils, throwing careless glances at the birds which sang on the door to your hidden room?

And now I hear your voice, sometimes, and I think it has a slightly mocking ring to it.  By the time I answer you, you’ve always disappeared.

--

You leave little gifts, to remind me that you’re here, little shining things.  And I look at them, and leave them there, and when I return to look at them again, I realise that they’re made of light.

--

I found you hiding under the leaves of a great plant.  You were still small, as you had been before, but you stood a little taller.  You flashed me a brazen smile as I picked you up, by the scruff of your neck.  I carried you through the wilderness of my mind, and placed you back in your box, as gently as before.

You seemed a little less happy, this time round, a little less content with your surroundings.  There was something about your expression which I would class as almost ‘scheming’.

I pressed the lid tight, re-wrapping your box with brown paper, and as an afterthought, tied you up with a bright red ribbon, in a bow, to keep you securely inside.

I turned off the light, slammed the door, and watched the creepers reclaim that far forgotten place at the back of my brain.

--

Last time I saw you, I was angry.

I’d gone to your dark room, which by now I’d marked on my map, to ensure that you were well, that you were happy, but you’d broken free again.  The brown paper was in rough pieces on the floor, the ribbon tossed carelessly to one side.

You stood amongst the wreck, staring straight at me, your face illuminated by the light from crack in the door.  I expected to see fear in your eyes, you so little and so sweet, but you were entirely stern, your brow cast in a frown.

The lamp lay on the floor, the bulb smashed.  The cushion you had vindictively torn open, its stuffing strewn across the ground.  You stood there wrapped in the blanket I’d given you to keep you warm.  You were a little larger this time, the size of a child, and you opened your mouth to speak.

But before any words could pass you lips, I picked you up, roughly as you were heavy and I was weak.

I fashioned you a cage.  There you stood, behind the gilded bars, still staring and silent.  I locked you away with a great, black lock.  I fastened its three keys to the ribbon which I tied around my waist.

I half hoped you’d look forlorn, as you glared back out at me, but instead you were astute.  I passed you the remains of the cushion on which to sleep.  And as I walked back out into the garden, the keys rattled around my waist.

--

After that, my mind was quiet for a while.  The creepers crept, and the birds sang on the branches, and a kind of quiet fell.  Trees grew. Old memories ran through the garden.

Occasionally, I missed your voice and your easy way, and I thought I heard echoes of it as the sun set in the evening.  As I wandered, I forgot.  The route to your dark room became overgrown.  I smiled more often.  Life regained its rhythm.  One day, even the whispers of you were gone.

I took the ribbon from around my waist, tattered now, and fraying, and hung the keys on the bough of an ageless oak.  They hung there in the afternoon like jewels.

--

I should have guessed.  I should have guessed that you would find a way out.  When you finally did appear, as always, you took me by surprise. 

--

I wandered through the garden and saw that the branch was bare.  I thought that the ribbon must have rotted, the keys fallen to the earth and planted themselves like seeds.  But I still felt unsettled.

I began to look for signs of you everywhere I went.  I checked the paths for footprints other than my own, child’s footprints which with a light step were moving through the undergrowth unseen.  I thought I saw strands of golden hair caught in the twisted arms of a bramble. It turned out to be glancing sunlight.  And come to think of it, your hair is black.

It might have been evening when you stepped out in front of me as I wound my way through the trees.  I stopped dead, open mouthed, in my tracks, and stared up at you.  This time, you were a man.  Broad.  Tall.  Wide jawed and watchful, with hazel coloured eyes beneath long lashes.  I suffocated.

You took my small self in your own strong grip.  You placed your hand behind my head, pulled me towards you.  I almost cried with the intensity of that embrace.  We stood there a moment, entwined.  But sometimes bodies pressed together are not enough.

--

I pushed you away with such force that you fell to the ground.  You looked up at me in bewilderment.  It was as if a serpent had spied me from the canopy, flicked its forked tongue, and coiled around my wrist.  I raged and screamed and raged and dragged you with a new-found strength.  You didn’t struggle.

There, at the edge of the forest, was a gate I barely knew existed.  I don’t know what’s beyond.  Emptiness, perhaps.  I wrenched it open, still raging, metal scraping through the hard earth, and expelled you from the garden.

I closed the gate, and weak with anger, leant against the bars.  I closed my eyes.

--

That night I dreamt of giants.  I slept badly.  I had fitful attacks of conscience.  I pictured your three photographs, their faceless reproductions flanking me in the dark.  I found myself in a box, with high walls and a heavy lid.  It was very large, or I was very, very small. It was only then that I began to stir.

--

When I woke up in the morning, something had changed in me.  It seemed, in the pale, early light, that there was something unreal about the garden.  Things grew there, yes, but nothing ever died.  No autumn leaves rotted beneath the trees.  In fact, there were no seasons at all.

The birds that used to sing above your door were nothing more than a Chorus, a flock of guardians with coloured wings.  Where had your blanket come from?  Where had I found the great, black lock for your cage?  What about the ribbon I’d tied around my waist, why did it look so much like a snake? 

And why had I pushed you away?

--

I stood up, brushed the earth from me, picked a white, stiff flower.  A moment of indecision.  A moment of decision.  I opened the gate, and walked out into the world.

Reviews

[West Lake Angel]

This is very intense. I was drawn in and enjoyed it very much. I've never been good at figuring out hidden meanings, so I don't really understand what the boy/man represents, just that it's something that is truly hurting the main character. Thank you for sharing your story. : )