Cardboard Box

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I’m finally looking into the cardboard box
I brought home from my mother’s house
late last month;

The clementines she insisted I take and perched on top
have long since been eaten;
it’s been otherwise untouched
sitting in the corner of the yellow room.

Two pairs of my infant pajamas —
The yellow corduroy with the embroidered lion;
the faded white and green night dress.
She had remarked on the drawstring
she had sewn into the bottom,
how it was still there,
and the fold-over sleeves to keep me from scratching myself
as I slept in my crib.

My white shoes, too —
laces gone,
but still with their impossibly stiff soles;
my grandmother’s blue-and-white Canton ware,
wrapped in the 1975 Daily News
from Bowling Green, Kentucky.

That night,
just before I left,
we sat on the basement couch flipping through
faded Kodak prints, square with rounded corners,
(most taken before we moved into the house on the hill).

We paused at one where I wore that night dress,
standing with my sister
in the deep darkness of an evening east window.
There were others, too, from that forty-years-ago,
and she told me again about each one.

We had such fun, she said,
such fun.

18 thoughts on “Cardboard Box”

  1. Arti's avatarArti

    Beautiful- feeling blessed to have come across this poem today. Before I get lost in trying to find the right words to express how much your words meant, I’ll just say- thank you.

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  6. josna's avatarjosna

    Painfully poignant. I suppose I see why it would be easier to eat the clementines than to reopen that box and all it evokes. And I suppose a mother’s sadness is a heavy weight for the son to have to carry. I read this with my own situation in mind of course, identifying with the mother even as my heart aches for the son. I couldn’t be with my son this Christmas/New Year, and the only thing he could say to me, interestingly enough, was to thank me for the clementines–via text message, of course.

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    1. bussokuseki's avatartac Post author

      Thank you, Eric, precious indeed. It’s amazing how much preciousness can fit inside a little cardboard box…or on the edge of a couch cushion… Be well~

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    1. bussokuseki's avatartac Post author

      Charlotte – What a gift, thank you so much. I wish that I had posted more of them recently. They’re in there somewhere… I hope you are well.

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