Prose Poem: The Empty Box.

 

The delivery guy took the refrigerator

out of the box and set it up in the kitchen

for us. Then he carted the old one away.

It looked great and ran so quiet --

not like our old clunker,

which rattled and dripped condensation

continuously onto the floor.

I put the big refrigerator box

in the spare bedroom --

because I thought it might come in handy

someday.

Those things are huge --

big enough to house a person, really.

****************************

It came on very slowly,

and we hardly noticed it for months,

my wife and I,

but finally we admitted to each other

that a chilling sadness had settled 

into our home.

We both walked into the spare bedroom

and immediately knew it was the empty box.

The empty refrigerator box, 

where no one was ever home,

which no children ever played in --

a thing with no purpose.

"Throw it away!" my wife pleaded.

But that didn't help much.

There remained a dead silence underneath

the carpeting that muffled our aspirations. 

Until she bought a ficus plant for

the spare bedroom.

Then the sunlight that streamed

through the window motes

began to remind us of warmth.

Next I put up a bird feeder

in the backyard --

nothing but sparrows and squirrels

ever show up at it,

but their frantic chatter 

stays a comfortable echo

during the blank nights.

Then in quick succession

we set up a fish tank,

learned to bake artisan bread together,

which we donated to the local Ronald McDonald House,

and acquired an aunt for the spare bedroom.

She is dotty and collects glass doorknobs,

like that character actor on Bewitched.

And our house began to blush and breathe again,

like a living thing.

We haven't taken the final step yet,

of having a child,

because children bring so many boxes

into your life.

And I'm not sure if Amy and I

can stand another empty box in the house again.

Maybe if we started small, with an empty

candy bar wrapper,

and worked our way up . . .