If I Let You In, Again
There are two invisible boxes floating around the first floor in my house. The first one surrounds me. An invisible force field that holds all my wants, hopes, sorrows, and fears in — to keep them from flying around the house and bumping into things. To keep them from destroying the picture frames in the hallway or the whiskey glasses on the shelf.
The second box hovers just next to the kitchen sink. It holds a separate set of desires, prayers, ambitions, and terrors. The force field contains all of the past and present. It contains him.
I watch as water splashes up and onto the sides of the sink. I’ll wipe that off later. He always forgets, and I don’t mind. He hates the way I load the dishwasher so I let him do it. We talk.
Little streams filled with thoughts and emotion transfer from box to box in long lines of code surrounded in idea-preserving carbon dioxide. That’s fine. I don’t mind it. I’m used to it. But lately, when his box bumps up against mine, I wonder: should I keep the door closed?
He used to see the box. I wonder if he does anymore. I wonder if he’s still willing to be pelted with the ideas and feelings that fly around inside, moving past the speed of sound.
I used to see his better. I need to try harder, to really look and to wholly see. To notice the way his box glows blue or green when he talks about his favorite things, or how it drips red when his heart is hurting.
When you first fall in love, all you notice is the box that holds their soul. But then things get in the way of you seeing. Mostly your own self. Your own box and all of the what ifs inside it. Flying ideas like “What if they stop loving me?” and “What if I keep them out so they can’t hurt me again?”
Inside my box, it can be noisy. It can shake me and almost break me, being in there. Sometimes, though, it’s quiet. Too quiet. Some days I wish I could fling it open. But that would mean the end of the vase I got at the antique shop that holds the flowers I pick from my mostly unkempt yard in the spring, before the summer’s heat assaults me.
The dishes are done. His box moves closer to mine. I wonder if he ever thinks about flinging it off. I don’t think he has as many hidden things in there as I do in mine. He would probably just let me walk in and stay if I wanted. That’s how he is. Freer, somehow.
Just because we live in the same house, share the same kitchen sink, and sleep in the same bed doesn’t mean I have to pretend like we’re the same person, or share one box. We’re different. That’s a fact. Not different bad or different good: just different. For over a decade, we’ve shared spaces. Little ones, strange ones, borrowed ones, owned ones.
He moves closer, his box glowing a transparent gray. He wants to know what I’m thinking. The steady streams of ideas have stopped at my silence. It seems like an ordinary moment, but I know that it’s turned into something much more.
I have to decide what I want to do. Should I let our boxes touch? Should I open one side into his so that for a moment the two boxes become one? But then, he does something surprising. Something neither of us has ever done before.
His box flings wide open and the sound of shattering glass echoes through the room. The ideas assault the table and it sounds like the wrath of a thousand woodpeckers has been unleashed. His eyes plead with mine. His box begins to fall apart in chunks that land with loud thuds on the hardwood floor.
I can keep my box closed if I want. It would mean I’m protected. He can’t hurt me if I don’t let him in. But what would that mean for us? I place my hand over my heart, apologizing in advance for the breaking that will inevitably happen, and fling my box open, at last.
The house is destroyed. The whisky glasses are broken. And finally, I move to wipe down the only untouched thing. There is still a puddle of water on the stone countertop next to the sink. I wipe it with the debris-filled towel before I go to him, letting him in, again: finally without walls.
