The Box
You know when it doesn’t feel right being somewhere? Like you were out of alignment with all the other bodies and carcasses. You had planned to be here — had scheduled it years in advance. You’d scheduled, somehow, every hour of your life without awareness of the grotesque and specific accumulation of your routine. You hadn’t meant to be here, really, yet it was inevitable that you would be. Anything else, you might have wondered, would feel out of alignment. But you didn’t wonder, and besides, you’d have been wrong. So again, you were here, per your own construction, but this time you suspected coercion. In fact, you’re sure of it; you’re convinced. You rapidly, steadily decide to launch an inquiry. Fortunately, you have the wherewithal to keep this covert, below wraps, in a little box in your suddenly churning head as it rotates this way and that, like a malfunctioning robotic arm, originally designed to assemble auto parts. And as your head rotates at impossible angles, as surely your neck must be irreparably mangled, you keep the little box steady inside, almost as though it were the axis of all rotation. But probably, by chance, you’ve just placed the box where your axis would anyhow rest. And here you store your box — for safekeeping. For another day.
