The Box on the Table

The Box on the Table

There is a box on the table. I don't know how it got there. I was in the kitchen all morning, and I would have noticed a box. But there it is, and I am looking at it.

It is not a special box. Cardboard, the size of a shoebox, with a lid that sits loose. No tape. No writing. The cardboard is the colour of cardboard that has been in a cupboard for a long time. Grey-brown, soft at the edges.

I do not want to open it.

This is not fear. It is something else. The same feeling you get when you are in a room and you realise you have been holding your breath. You let it out, and the room is the same, but you are different. The room knows you let it out.

I sit at the table. The box is at the other end. I put my coffee next to it. The mug is blue. The box is brown. The table is wood. These are facts. I am collecting them.

The woman next door is barking. She has been barking all week. Not a metaphor. Barking. Her throat making the sound a dog makes. I have never seen her. I only know her by the sound she makes. I think of her as Dog Woman. I think she has chosen the floor.

The barking stops.

The silence is worse than the barking. The silence has a shape. It is the shape of the room with the barking removed. The box is in the room. The silence is around the box.

I touch the box. The cardboard is warm. Not from the sun. The sun is not in this room. The warmth is from something else. Something inside.

I lift the lid.

Inside the box is a plate. The plate has dried sauce on it. The sauce has formed a continent. A map of something that was eaten. I recognise the plate. It is my plate. I ate from it three days ago. I did not wash it. I left it on the counter. I forgot about it.

The plate is in the box. The box is on the table. The table is in the room. The room is in the building. The building is in the city. The city is on the continent. The continent is the shape of the sauce on the plate.

I put the lid back on the box.

I do not know what this means. I do not need to know. The box is on the table. The plate is in the box. The sauce is on the plate. The continent is on the sauce. I am in the room. The room is around me. The box is between us.

The woman next door starts barking again. The sound is the same. I am the same. The box is the same. The plate is the same. The continent is the same.

I drink my coffee. The coffee is cold. I did not notice it getting cold. The cold is a fact. I am collecting facts.

The box is on the table. I am at the table. The coffee is cold. The woman is barking. The plate is in the box. The continent is on the plate.

I do not open the box again.