The box is full of letters

The Ugly Old Shoe Box.

The box is full of letters. Unfinished, unsent, unwanted letters.

It’s and ugly old shoe box. That seemed fitting.

She usually ignores the box when she sees it, sitting there in her room. If it drives her crazy then she will just turn off the lights and then she can’t see it anymore.

She walks towards the box and picks it up.

Everything inside her screams for her to stop, to burn it, to forget.

She opens the box.

Please, I was just being stupid. I’m sorry and I never mea

She shuts the box and throws it to the ground.

And she remembers why she doesn’t want to remember.

Once she tried burning the box. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t let herself remember, but she wouldn’t let herself forget.

She was a monster.

She stands up and grabs a roll of tape.

And goes crazy.

“Sir? Excuse me sir, you have a package.” He signs the paper and takes the package.

It looks like it was attacked by the tape monster.

It takes him the better part of an hour to get the tape off.

He was always careful like that.

He opens the box and reads the first line.

He shuts it immediately.

He doesn’t want to read that. It doesn’t matter what it says.

He puts the box away, but he can still see the ugly old shoe box.

He turns off the lights.

In a week it will be back to her house, with the tape carefully placed along the edges.

He was always careful like that.

It was a dance they did. One week at each of their houses. It was a terrible silent contract that they were both terrified to stop.

They would never move on, they would never remember. It was a deep hole that they had jumped into, and now that they were trying to get out they refused to help each other. They could not go back and face each other, but they could not go forward and turn their backs.

It was one ugly old shoe box and it held them prisoner and tortured them more than any physical pain could. It dictated their lives.

Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget, they lived their lives never living. They lived their lives in the shadow of what should have been.