Shadows & Dust [poetry]

The Boy in a Box

There's a boy in a box that I hold

inside me, the bluish-white petals

of his skin a closed bud of a fist

never to open, dry and crumbling,

an unwanted gift unclaimed,

sparrow-like bones reed-thin and

hollow, at once an absence

and a presence, abscessed too

deeply beneath the skin to ever

be fully excised, caged tight

behind the housing of my ribs,

nudging my pulsating heart.