Q

I had always lived in a box. Don’t remember a time I didn’t. Always have, for as long as I knew. It felt comfortable, made me feel safe. Sometimes I realise I couldn’t breathe or stretch but most of all I felt like I belonged there. I didn’t imagine a time where I didn’t live in a box. But one day it happened. Maybe it was me, maybe just the box, I don’t know, and it did not matter anyway. Whatever it was, the seams of the box fell apart. Yes, just like that. First the seams tore, and before I could do anything, it simply, simply, fell apart. I didn’t believe there to be anything beyond the box. Even if there was, I knew it was something I didn’t want. Unsafe, uncomfortable. So the day my box fell apart, I could not see past the ruins around me. I clutched on tight to the edges and prayed that if I could hold it together long enough, it would lodge itself back together (like it had before). But this time, the box had fallen apart and there was nothing I could do. It, firstly, felt different. Incomplete. As after all, it had always been Me in the Box. Just – me, tasted strange on my tongue. Then I discovered I could stretch my legs. And my arms. At first there was pain. A sore you feel when you use a part of you for the first time (or the first time in a long long time). I liked the feeling, strangely. Then there was the air. It smelt so different, felt so different down my throat. It was foreign, slightly uncomfortable, slightly exhilarating. It confused me. And because it was my first time breathing I drank in the air, sharp painful bursts in my lungs. It was cathartic. For awhile I had forgotten about my box. The box. But I had lived in there for such a long, long time. So later in the day when everything new had ceased to be new, I went back and peered at the box. The relics of the box that fell apart. It looked very different from the outside, not like anything it had seemed when I lived in there. Sometimes I imagined myself to be back in the box. It made me sad, because I missed the feeling, so I quickly stopped remembering. Later on, I felt sad again, but because I had stayed in the box for such a long, long time. I wanted to know why I had, but I could no longer remember why, ever since I stepped out, I had forgotten why I had lived there in the first place. I thought, maybe, while I was in there, a sparrow had passed by. Maybe, I could have had held it in my hands if I had been outside the box to meet it. Then I thought, maybe I would have seen a rainbow. I remember a rainbow from before I lived in a box, but then again I don’t quite remember the times I had before I lived in a box. It started to rain. I cried and wished I could be back where I was sheltered. Then night seeped in and it became cold. I did not want to be in the box anymore, but it doesn’t seem as if I could live outside the box. I laid down on the grass and cried harder. And then, through my tears, I saw stars dotting the night sky. I haven’t seen those before, back in the box, or before I lived in a box. I thought maybe, maybe I could learn to live.