my jewelry box

I sometimes catch myself watching the black jewelry box that stands next to my bedside. Well, I don’t know if it actually qualifies as a jewelry “box”, it’s larger than you would imagine a jewelry box would need to be. When I stand up, it towers just above my belly button. It’s not only tall, it’s heavy, too heavy for me to carry at least. Its legs rattle and creak in protest whenever I half drag half carry it to a different corner of my room, reminding me of its old age. 

I’m not sure how old it is, but I’m sure it is older than I am. The jewelry box was actually a gift to my older sister from my grandma when we were still young enough to share a room. I have never met the original owner, my grandma’s mother, but . When my sister started high school and converted the office downstairs to a bedroom of her own, she left the jewelry box in the room I still reside in. When she left it, she left all her jewelry inside too. One year, I placed all of her stuff into a red box and gave it to her as a Christmas gift.  

On top of the jewelry box you can find random s**t that I threw up there without concern. If I remove all of it, the top can open to reveal a rosy pink ring cushion and other divided sections to fill with bracelets and other charms. It’s nearly empty. I don’t own much jewelry and what I do have, doesn’t get placed inside the black jewelry box.

Its body has double doors that form a flower in the center when they’re closed. I can open them to reveal four drawers and racks to hang necklaces on. I don’t remember the last time I wore any of the necklaces, or any of the many bracelets that are strewn throughout the top three drawers. The bottom drawer is home to the carcasses of the disposable razors I beheaded in the dead of night. 

The bottom drawer No one should dare open the bottom drawer, not even myself. In the bottom drawer there are only two items now: a pill container and a razor blade. Inside the pill container there are pills ranging from the sleeping pills my psychiatrist prescribed me to Advil and Tylenol and other random deadly looking pills I scavenged from the medicine cabinet before my mother locked it up. Next to it is the razor blade. 

Before, there used to be three items inside the bottom drawer. My mother found them and rid of them all. I’ve restocked all, but the third item. It was a letter, written to her. She was not intended to read it yet.   

I should repaint it. Maybe a new color will give it a new life, a new sense of purpose. Sand off all the blackness and impurities and paint a layer of yellow on the freshly polished wood. This time, I will fill its drawers with my most cherished possessions. I can lovingly place jewelry that I actually wear and small trinkets I find on walks. But even still, some of the black paint will always remain just under the surface. What if the yellow paint starts to crack and peel and there it is: the black paint I spent hours scraping and sanding, in hopes of exercising it from the box. Will I quickly add a new coat, or will I allow the black to slowly consume the jewelry box again? Maybe I’ll write a new letter, just in case.

Reviews

[A M John]

When I read this, the box seemed to me to work as a nice analogical object on which you have superimposed the uncertainties of the inner self. I found that the box was described with fond tenderness as one would for an object one has had a long time. The idea to paint it appeared to me as an examination of the self, an impulse to change it for the better. The hesitance to do so, for worries that the box would not be changed for good but will revert back to its initial undesirable state, is also a nice expression of the anxieties of changing oneself and what may happen thereafter.