Inside this tiny box

Cramped and fetally reimagined

A tiny pinhole, a pin prick of light

But from it spills sugar in the road

Suffocated by my own actions

Gulping for strength

In these compartments, you speak

Tightly packaged with your insularity

Unable to access the claustrophobic pain around you

Selfishly cloistered in your own world

Smothering, with relentless words all those close to you

Escape by a thread

 A fly ball saved an inch over the fence

The loss of a wing but safe landing

A dropped stitch after glancing away only momentarily

A swim in the ocean precisely just when

Lightning scorched the shore’s breaking waves

And took you away

Further out there’s only stillness in that deep

Stroke to its middle, so hard lapping to solitude

Deep, still and dark now with only what ifs and whys

The attendant saw my mother’s tiny box

Transported across state lines

He pumped her gas for free with wisdom

And my cousin’s tear, just a child, as that box was buried so gently underneath

It’s contents so fragile