My Little Red Box

I am a strange room of soft toys, spoons and splitters.
A little temple of doom with soft linings - linings which don’t quite catch my fall however hard I grip them.
I look around. Try to follow the thread of myself. Find the story which lies dormant.
Try to think of what another pair of eyes will see.
Uncle Bill on the fridge. A duck. A rodent. A few words.
The face of the only person left who still loves me.
My stomach falls. At the pestle. At the little red box.
To prepare and to prepare and to prepare.
My hand gives over the money to the woman who calls me love.
Everybody knows and nobody knows.
I see the people who pray in red T-shirts. They make me think of my little red box and what I will put inside it. I watch them from up above in the coffee shop window. I prefer to sit upstairs now. I look down and see them take the hand of a man. And I so ache. I so want it to be my hand. My hand sits charred around a cold cup of coffee. Idle on a pile of words. Today’s news.
The man laughs when they leave. Maybe he wasted their prayer.
I go back to my room.
The boxes.
Red box. Key in red socks.
Blue box. Key in blue socks.
You have to have a system.
As I turn each lock I know the system of this strange room whittles me away. A key which makes no noise as it falls onto thick beige carpet.
A story locked in boxes. Wasted words. Forgotten ideas.
But you do not need to keep the pages to remember the book.
It rests in you. Larger than the toys. The spoons and the splitters.
It will never get lost in a little red tin.