They hide gifts,
They hold thinking,
                  stinking or otherwise,
They help sort, organize, stuff,
                      S.O.S.
for us who need boxes and either
what we own is inside a box, which'is
inside a box we live in but the letters
of the names are scrambled as
they were dropped as I rambled
past the point of no return.

Then there is thinking outside the box.

Compass points that are arrows to Mr. and Ms. Direction,
an insurrection of sorts if your internal compass,
misleads and you wrap your arms to shore up the sides
which look like ribs but act like boxwalls and constrict your
breathing, and you end up
heaving, gasping and reaching for a paper bag,
to even your breathing
           to signal your leaving, anxious for this to end?
                         so I can start grieving for
what I never had,
an imagination, without walls of cardboard.


©DWE112013