a ten minute tale*
She tried to forget about the box. Really she kept herself so very busy, that she almost truly forgot about it. But it was always there, catching her step when she walked past, whispering into her ears when she wasn’t listening.
A box could contain everything and nothing. But she didn’t look because she didn’t care to find out.
She found it one warm summer afternoon, long after the funeral. She had been stiff and dignified, accepting the mourners’ murmured words of condolence. But she felt nothing. Those words rang hollow after all the sniping and criticism. Her mother had ground her down for years until there was nothing left. Or so she thought.
It was so unfair that there was nobody else to help. Her beloved father had gone years before. She imagined him apologising to the paramedic.
“Sorry to cause all this fuss,” he would have said as they bundled him off to the hospital. There, he had held her hand as she wept real tears.
“Really, Theresa, you’re making an exhibition of yourself.” Her mother’s scold bit deep.
She tried not to cry at his funeral. At her mother’s funeral, she didn’t. They all said how well she was doing.
Clearing out the house alone, she found the little dusty blue box, tied with navy ribbon. Eventually she gave in. It rattled.
Inside it she found the baby shoe she had once worn. Finally she cried, that her mother had remembered a softer, better time.
*written longhand in ten minutes, from a random word prompt: box
