Prying open the box.

Sitting beside him on the bed,
his daughter reads aloud a poem,
If by Rudyard Kipling.

She pronounces Rudyard’s name wrong
and in a voice short of a whisper,
he corrects her.

It's a scene she would replay hundreds of times 
in her mind.

Why this poem?
Why this chosen arrangement of words 
to place at the door step of his
final three days?

"If you can keep your head 
when all about you are losing theirs..."

Correcting her? 
Really? 
Why had he been so keenly aware of her performance?

"If you can bear to hear the truth you've 
spoken,
Twisted by knaves to make a trap 
for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to
broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with
worn-out tools..."

There is a sense of familiarity in this.

She's in her childhood home.
Together, 
they sit on her bed.
She reads aloud 
in beginner writer words
a "Dear Paper" poem

And instead of feeling the warmth of praise,
her face turns hot with shame.
His brow said it loudly,

She could do better. 

"And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about 
your loss..."

She sits quietly at the hospital window
waiting for some sort of miracle.

Across the room, 
her father fumbles around looking for a railing.
He pulls himself upright
and sees her.
"You're not writing?" 

She is startled by the strength in his voice.

"You want me to write, right now?"
She hugs the journal in her arms.
"It's a little hard to write right now."

He brows her that same face of disapproval
from years ago.

She could do better

If.
It can be a torturous thought.
Hope in a box.
Let it become everything,
and you will end up with nothing.

"Yours is the Earth and everything that's 
in it..."

She decides to pry open the lid 
to let whatever's inside escape,
brows up or brows down. 

Note

What critical words have you been carrying around for too long? Describe the person who said them. In what ways have their words impacted your life? What might happen if you set aside the naysayers?

Write

In complete honesty, I’ve never really reflected on why I read this poem to my dad that day. I had sort of forgotten the time I read to him in my bedroom when I was a kid and how embarrassed I was by his unsupportive reaction to it. I didn’t share anything with him again for a very long time.