Everyday Canvas

The Box

Prompt: You have a Pandora's box in your possession. It contains one of these 5 things: Evil, Love, Peace, Hope, and Friendship. If you open the box, one of these will be released. Do you open it? Do you hide it somewhere? If you are brave and open it, what happens? Write a story or poem or whatever you want about this.

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Note: I am an all or nothing-at-all person, so I'm letting everything out, not just one thing.


The Box

Following the ruts in the mud, I found the box
inside a field of wheatgrass and timothy,
and before I could bend the latch to open it up,
I recalled holding it once, in a clueless life,
on a stormy sea, until it was swept overboard
and gathered shells that made intricate designs
and wavy lines on its surface as if crocheted lace.

Amazing! In reverence, no sharks had circled tight
to chew it to chunks, I assumed, due to its contents.
So, thinking fearlessness is a painless death,
I bit my lips and unlocked what had long remained shut.

Craving air, the contents jumped leaving skid marks
and I blinked through their fervent revelations of favor
and altogether with precision, peace, love and hope
flew into my far-out mind, pulling friendship in tow.

Yet, flaunting its scaly skin and neon eyes, evil
fluttered overhead distorting perspectives to block
the beauty and what lay beneath the rain-washed skies’
however, I fled with haste, akin to Pandora,
blighted by a cursed aura and bad conscience, to outlive
my own vilification, walking a tightrope, on
the outsides of my feet. So hard to keep my balance,

for the least believable story is the truth and
there are many ways to be lost and crippled, unless
the hope in me heaves with the tides and insides
of love, peace, friendship, and despite my inner chaos,
--like a miner stumbling wide-eyed on a vein of gold--
I rise with a scrap of victory and polish my stained self.