Compartmentalizing

Credit: http://www.lifeinbmajor.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Boxes.gif

I return this dented box, shoving it in the kitchen pantry.
It is a medium box with stains in speckles and splotches.
Both scarce longing to create irresistibly divine patisserie
and ever-ever boredom with the daily dinner grind are in it.
Each peek-in-the-pantry sighting draws a slight grimace.

This other box is stashed in the dusty dark under my bed,
cobwebbing silk and soot settled atop its large, locked-in lid.
In it, I keep tools of torture like tethers and ties, paddles too,
but I also store scented love notes and wedding souvenirs,
and a single diamond earring still missing its mate long gone.

This other box is huge and heavy, left open wide-way always.
I keep it in the entryway to the house just by an open door.
It contains letters, applications and bills; it bulges with stuff,
shoes of all kinds from cleats to slippers, and also jackets.
Another house it is of walking in head up then out the door.

Another box is buried in the backyard unknown its condition.
It’s been there since the children were very small and fragile,
attached to small furry animals that died and broke smiles,
and that is surely where the younger’s missing pacifier went
along with the “I will never grow up and leave you, Mommy.”

The final box is delicately fine, petite, and hidden up a sleeve.
It is onyx coated slick with fine rubbing fingers’ calming slide.
It weighs so little it attaches to the string around my ankle
that I hardly notice it until I reach down to feel its smoothness
atop and its soft opening lips midway that smile in emptiness.