Box
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Conor Hyde, Grade 12, Ocean Reef Senior High School
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Short Story
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2011
Excellence Award in the 'Step Write Up 2011' competition
Box.
Think outside of the box.
Someone once said this to me. The very phrase brought me to a confused standstill. I couldn't understand it.
Was not thinking, in and of itself, uncontainable? The very processes and boundless space of which to conceive a theory, a thought, an idea, a script or rhyme, were to be perhaps limited within a 6 sided object? And I was, if only in a disregarding manner, to think outside of this box?
What box? Where is it and why is it? Is it a corporeal thing (metaphorically speaking) in this plain of thought every human lays claim to, or is it a trickery of the light meant to con one in to believing they were trapped within something that was but an intangible illusion? Like a mime, forever caught in his self-wrought, personal glass prison.
Why would someone stumble into this box? Would they be marched solemnly in by human vices... or , in turn, virtues? Or would they go willingly, like unarmed warriors marching off for their country as if the offering of their one measly soul (or, an ill remembered death) will save their friends, family and home.
Given that the box exists, and forced by the very statement to believe myself (my thoughts?) are held within, how is one to break free of the box? Do you throw your thoughts? Do you push open a lid, open a door, slip through a bar grate or hide in the washing cart? Or do you simply will the box away – attack it with conscious thought or imagined weaponry, burning it, cutting it or elsewise belittling it into nothing but a smear on the floor of your consciousness.
… If I could do such things, I would bundle my thoughts into a ball and craft it wings. Surely wings would free my thoughts from the dark smear that would be left of the box.