I wish that I could stay in this box for you.
And I promise I would
even though it’s the wrong shape for me and
I have to break my bones
and rearrange my organs
just to fit.
I would stay here
and wait for you
and, like all the boys that have come and gone before,
I would set myself alight
just to keep you warm.
I would set these broken parts to
mend in misdirections.
I would live in ashes, bent backwards,
facing the wrong way,
if I knew that every moment could be like the first ones.
If you could acknowledge how misshapen I’d become
and how much pain I lived in
being here.
If knowing my discomfort
you might carry around the box I lived in
and gingerly guard me from the world around.
And being too scared to rip the box hinge from hinge
for fear of what I might be when I stretched my limbs again,
you could at least recognise
who I could be, even deformed.
For I know you might not be strong enough
to splinter your own hands
prying it open, but
if you could just open the lid every now and then,
or puncture a window to let in the sun,
I would stay here.
Wishing this box was my shape.