the kleenex box

Quietly in the corner, lurking, waiting, sits the kleenex box.  It doesn't get much attention, gathering dust and malice, waiting to strike.  

Underneath the kitschy design printed on the cardboard shell, 

the kleenex box is an alligator - waiting to bite a hand, to twist it's victim to the ground in pain.  

Sitting inanimate in the corner, telling everyone that a cute little cube couldn't possibly have teeth. Occasionally someone will tempt the box, reaching for a tissue and retreating quickly away to the other side of the room.  The box could bite that hand, but instead it waits.



That flowery box could bite any hand, could turn an innocent reach for a tissue into crippling despair.  It could bite the hand of the boy that got skis for his birthday.  It could bite the hand of the girl that got the chickens she always wanted.  It could bite the hand of the man with the beautiful wife, or the woman who never frowned.  But the tissue box is cruel, and it waits for his hand.  


It waits for the hand of the boy coming home to nobody.  It waits for the hand of the boy who had to stop learning to have fun so he could learn to be a man.  It waits for the hand of the boy who has not seen his family in 154 days.  

The kleenex box bites the boy because of all the times he came home and listened to music with his brother.  It bites the boy because of all the lessons he was taught by his father.  It bites the boy because his mother loved him.  It bites the boy because his sister secretly made him smile.  It bites the boy because the boy had everything, and he never even glanced toward the tissue box.  It bites the boy because he believed that it did not have teeth.

The kleenex box bit, and it left it's teeth on the floor next to the boy.  The boy who can't wake up in the morning, the boy who can't write like he used to, the boy who can't remember what it was like to have parents. The box bit the boy who has nothing anymore.