Cedar Box

It's all in there.
My heart is in that box.
The blanket that swaddled me when i was barely even thought of,
the key to the place I used to call home,
the rose petal from the bouquet I got the first time I ever danced for an audience.
Photographs.
These are the things in the box that I can take out and smell and feel and look at,
and I can smile.
But it's a generous box.
There are letters in the box.
Words of passion and guidance and assurance of the ever fixed marked that is love.
If only it were ever fixed.
The letters are merely the whispers of the conversations that were once had.
Now they're just tear stained paper.
Dry, brittle.
And they lie next to a necklace.
One that was ripped off a neck in a rage of bloody agony and thrown into my hands with a cry of "Take it! I can't look at it! I can't look at love anymore!"
And I did, I took it,
and now I have to look at love everyday as a reminder of what a precious gift it is, and how lethal.
And next to the necklace is a blade. A blade with a crusted edge.
A blade that sliced and diced and ripped it's way through my skin and my soul and my family and my love and my very existence.
And the blade scratches the necklace that rings around the letters that bleed their lying words onto the photographs, tainting their innocence with deceit and remorse.
And the pictures drip their woes onto the blanket,
scarring my very origination.
Fermenting my very conception with dread.
And it's all in the cedar box.
And I can't open the lid.