Boxes and boxes, one by one, boxes and boxes, one and done! Boxes come in square and round, wooden edges and cardboard mounds. What kind of box, I wonder, does a criminal wear? The kind that leaves no fingerprints. The kind that holds the treasure. The kind with curvy faces and sharpened vertices, stuck at the end of a metal pole, stamped into the shape of a pen, sitting at his desk, and glancing back at me, with a seco'dary iro'y of fraudule't a'alysize, from one, to two, to two, to three. The boxes pile up, and smell of a life, so wasted, with sober, oiled eyes. It was at my behest, that fateful evening, that my beloved was to be sat at my desk, awaiting my company. He wasn't in attendance for a reason of his own, no– it was the rather peculiar relation I held with my treasury that became a point of entrance for him. What else was a young gentleman to do, so formerly rich and smoldered by this world's ideals, but to be wed off to a more refined, elegant lady, possibly many times his age? Alas. Such a scenario was all but guaranteed to young adults with a posh living style, no family to speak of, and not a particularly attractive set of features otherwise. The common tale applied to no one greater than him and I, under that faint candle light.
We first met under a bridge, where I had found him sleeping on top of a cardboard fortress, layered with carpets and scraps. His appearance was disheveled and muted. He wore a pair of stitched denim trousers, his legs covered by a cloth blanket, the underside of which indicated that it was originally used for flooring. His upper half was draped in an assortment of rags and bubblewrap. He was barefoot, and stood a little over six feet, his legs covered by lacerations and a potent infection rotting his left half. A sickening appearance, I would've said aloud, had it not been for a feature of his, so coveted by me, so desperately, so delicately. A set of features. An assortment, I asserted, of a sworn royalty, occurring in the modern century. No other reality, I suppose, could a man be so close to me, even with my age to be. It was shown on the record that he was, indeed, a man, and not a day over three at that. A perfect age, I'd be the first to say, that young, summertime naivety, faded yet not, but still much further in his trials than someone less ripened. There was none of that ineloquent hubris I would have found elsewhere; indeed, the most efficient agent was suffering. Tender. Firm. A steel membrane layer of immaturity, dripping and draped, was he, when I had first cleaned the dirt from inside his ears. Toned, I would've said. Really. Really. Reality.
His first week was wrought with a few, many troubles. Broken plates. Shattered glass. The roundabout vase that would've cost a servant their head, yes, the usual variety, a gift (of many) from a dying or dead parent, if only to garner a sweetened sense of remorse. There was none, of course. Only an empty expression and the usual apology.The sigh. The bow. The sorry. The hands held out, awaiting for a destined violence, if not worse, if not worse! It was a mystery to me. How little he cared. So tantalizing. Yes. The tilted impression was casted on me that I likened to an insect, without the familiar cortexes that mandated a person's true humanity. His hands were unable to learn from any honest mistake, and whether it was a matter of mechanical inability or a mental, possible personal inhibition, mattered to me not. I quickly assigned him to the simple duty of pounding mochi, which he complied with readily. His hammer struck repetitively into the pulpy dough, drops of nectarus sweat running down his forehead, his body contorting, over and over, as the rice would turn over itself. Humid. Graced, was my hand, by that irregular rhythm, attempting to mimic that yelled performance. Loud. Dry. Stretched, over a bed of flour and thyme. My, what a marvelous wonder in his eyes.
His eating habits were irregular. He struggled with solid food, and required what was mostly liquid– not the slop fed to infants or the elderly, no, but rather preferred pure syrups and, if he was feeling a little adventurous, smoothies, grinded with several spoons of gelatin, as if lacking a reflex to chew, despite having most of his teeth. He preferred much of his meals eaten “red”, a curried powder face that would sit atop his sludge, made from a pestled mix of paprika and numbing peppers, and sprinkled with an ocean's dose of kosher salt. I'd put sawdust in the paste sometimes, but I don't think he noticed much. Strange? Yes, very strange. Strange indeed. But it was part of the appeal, yes, the appeal! Haphazardry was oh-so sensual indeed. What good is that perfect human, after all, all tired and dolled and rich, all mired in a tunneling sea of endless expectation, when you could be so much more free?
He stopped working one day. Malfunctioned, maybe. His gears and wires all tangled in a sprawling symphony until he began to smoke from the head. I decided to put him into a box to live out the rest of his days, which, to be honest, wasn't a large variation from his initial living conditions. But I like to think he was happier in that cage under my bed than he was cleaning floors. Maybe with that extra corset, the kind that wraps loosely around your waist. His every day wasn't so disastrous or eventful. He would wake at noon, prance in place, drink some water from the tube at the side of the wall, and eat some more mystery paste. He went missing a week after. I wasn't sure where he ran to, but I found the box in worrying condition, with feces smeared over the bars mixed with stains of blood. He was found by the police, however, whom swiftly returned him to me after an exhaustive series of apologies.
I wanted to beat him, just a little bit. Discipline of the most natural order. Pavlovian, I would propose, if my acts, so crude, would fit the standard in any way. It was difficult to educate the unreasonable. Especially with education of any serious complexity. I settled, mainly, for simply ringing a cloth hanging rack on the table, rather then subject him to any physical punishments, no matter how due they might have been. I wasn't the type to carry a whip, after all. No sir. Of course. Not at all. I was perfect. Perfect ladies should use their words, even if it might take a little convincing. Even if they lacked the ability to remember anything. Even if they could never say your name. Perfect. So perfectly. Elegance. Elegance. Elegantly, crying, he was, bawling, sprawling, the first pavement in the beckoning sea of riverbanks and sediment. Yes. Crying. Tears. The humanity. Oh, the humanity.
He rushed towards me. He put his arms around mine. He put his head around my stomach. He wailed. He flailed. He, so ever, so ever, so ever machine. What barbarism! What intermodality. What fun, it was. His slender fingers. His ribcage, so close, so close, so closely tangled in between me. Landscape. Ever sand. The sunset fantasy. The momentary lapse, was I, to him, to me, expecting just a little more out of his love. A little more. A little bit more then that, then that, then what I couldn't love. Gradience. Grey scale. Grey. Everything, in a shade of gray. But he refuses to look at me. But he refuses to look up. But he refuses my sanctity. But he refuses to let go. But he refuses me. Me. The all of me. The sobbing. The wobbling. The wailing cries of soundbytes. All of it to say a single line. He stayed in his box a little more obediently than before. There wasn't much a tired boy could do, I suppose, when it had been past his bedtime. Rebellion is only possible with fed stomachs.Yes. Of course. But I stepped a little too much into the boxes, I think, and awoke covered in them. Brown. Brown. All around. Cardboard fun. Chocolate mounds.
I was captured by the box people, and dragged, and murdered, and butchered. My body hung from atop a mountain of boxes, and there was nobody there to join me.