[Creative Nonfiction] The Box
Read the third-place entry for our week of January 12, 2025 prompt, The Untold Story, chosen by guest judge Eleanor Anstruther
The Box
by Elaina Parsons
I have a black photo box with pale pink roses painted in acrylics. A morsel of green intertwined between the flowers. The kind you find stacked in Home Goods. There are no photos in the box. I cannot bring myself to remove the lid. It’s not what you think. Not remnants of an old relationship or boyfriend toenail clippings. Not his love notes nor his guitar pick. Not like when Rachel retrieves her shoebox with the eggshell from when Ross made her breakfast in bed.
It contains portions of a time when I was permitted to think of myself first. To only care what my body was doing. Husband had the kids, and I had me, all alone in the downstairs spare bedroom. Inside the box with roses is a breathing device, instructions for emptying surgical drains, and a laminated poster for my girls with my own doodles—to remind them of all the good stuff while I was in the hospital for four days.
The drains I mention sucked the leftover liquid from my incision sites: breast and abdomen. And I knew they’d be removed once the liquid turned lighter— from Stop Sign red all the way to Ballet pink. We wanted ballet pink—me, my doctors, and my family. Pink like the roses painted on the box. I used gloves, and it became a very meditative ritual to empty each tube and measure the amount of pink ooze streaming from the sites.
A copy of the journal entry I made in the Recovery Recliner journal sits in the box too.
The journal that all women before me wrote in when they recovered from their bilateral mastectomies and reconstructions. Our rented motorized recliners from the women-run nonprofit made our recoveries more comfortable, sprinkled with a sense of community.
If I open the box I will cry. And I won’t be certain of the emotion. Because God knows, it’s not sadness or fear. Closer to yearn.
A Note From Our Guest Judge,
I've chosen this one for the importance of the last line. That final sentence, its form, meaning and effect. Three words, as if the revelation was too hard to admit any other way, and everything that has come before is turned on its head. It's a masterful example of unlocking; when a line reveals the truth of what you've been reading. The writer has deep-dived into their soul and pulled up something they're not "supposed" to feel, not "supposed" to think, and in that act of honesty, they offer a connection to all of us.
About Elaina Parsons
Elaina has a memoir collection called Italian Bones in the Snow with Vine Leaves Press, and a short story collection called Heart and Salt. She’s had multiple poems, essays, and flash fiction published in journals and anthologies. She loves ice cream, antiques, Bjork, and being a strong ally to the LGBTQ+ community.. She’s a graduate student through CUNY—Museum Studies. Check out her new book about growing up with sensory dysregulation in the 1980s out April 15! Chomp. Press, Pull.
This piece was written in response to the prompt The Untold Story.