What Were You Thinking, Pandora?

I can tell you from personal experience,

There wasn’t just one box.

Like the goddess Dolly Parton’s

Rhine-stoned blouse

With its mother of pearl buttons 

Hanging on for dear life,

My closet is full to bursting—

Boxes, bags, vases, urns 

Stacked Tetris-style floor to ceiling.

Trunks, crates, even a David Cassidy lunchbox—

Anything remotely resembling a container—

I’ve got hundreds, each sealed vice-tight 

With fishing line, surgery staples or duct tape,

Padlocks, superglue, zipties. 

Clearly a lesson here, but…

Temptation rings the doorbell 

And there I am, boxcutter in hand.

Yes, I peek. Often. 

As any learned scholar, or third grader, will predict,

An explosion of all the hells thus ensues 

And I end up divorced, disowned or exiled. 

Fired, fleeced, flattened, forsaken.

Sailing in a leaky ship sunk by my own stiletto.

Drowning in a misery moat of my own making.

What were you thinking, Ann?

I was thinking, which box next?

Published in What Next? Anthology, Dempsey & Windle Press, October 2020