The Convenient Box

As he was rushing, climbing the last steps of the building to the rooftop to watch the sunset, it finally dawned on Johnny that, just like the stairs were over, his one year old love experience was over too. Johnny looked all the way down to the bottom of the stairway on that very last day of the year, as if he were evaluating the whole year and the progress of his relationship going up one level at a time, taking it slowly over 12 months instead of taking the elevator. And when the time came for a milestone celebration, it was the end instead. He couldn't help but let couple of precious tears fall down, glittering like gold as the dying rays of the sunset penetrated them quickly like an arrow aimed at a dove flying in a cloudy sky that he thought he would see blue at one point.

Johnny lifted his head up and let himself breath the freedom he was granted but never demanded. He looked far away as he was approaching the edge of the building roof, with eyes that had exchanged life with death and a face that had swapped expressions with wrinkles for his tears to run comfortably through. His face muscles failed him in keeping the fake smile he drew on to get through the celebrating crowds in the lobby. Instead, his lips started nervously trembling  as he watched the dying sun getting buried in a purple sky.

Death was the only thought on Johnny's mind. Everything represented the end; the end of a day, the end of a year, sunset, the rooftop, and the end of a relationship. A relationship he thought that it was his last chance to live and continue his journey of a life that already lacked options. He felt imprisoned where he thought he was supposed to feel that he owned the world

As his silent tears exhausted the energy out of his body, Johnny collapsed down on his knees and buried his head in his big hands. The image of a candle in a convenient box was the only image he saw himself turning into the past year of his life. As he reflected upon the year, he saw the box getting opened, sometimes slightly, sometimes all the way and sometimes in between, depending on how much of a candle light was needed. Johnny also saw the phases when the box remained closed and wondered why he was not able to see the writings on the walls of the box. It was warm inside, but too dark. A candle needs air to stay lit, that was not the case for him.

Suddenly he heard the angry rhythm of the waves. It was louder than the voice he was infatuated with its never-ending and never fulfilled promises of tomorrow. Every wave splashed hard against reality, undressing it one layer at a time from all the dreams that were added on, in a fantasy he always knew on a certain level, would end. But suddenly ......... the angry waves calmed down and the voices of children's laughter shifted his attention from far away to a much closer place, a place where he was able to observe kids making fun of themselves as the waves were causing the castles they built on the sand to fall apart.

The waves turned into little splashes that started soothing Johnny's restless soul. And the minute his eyes, that were reflecting the glimpses of the dusk, caught the moon peacefully initiating a long silver stroke across the ocean's bed, he realized that the complete darkness he expected next, was merely the fear of the unknown. But Johnny knew one thing; the convenient box is no longer a convenient box. It's a precious box he had betrayed by allowing others to close. It's a precious box that he will carry in his heart and keep open all the time. Johnny finally went down through the lobby into the shore to walk. He didn't mind the celebrations around, he himself was celebrating at that point, by himself. He was celebrating a new beginning, a new light, and new possibilities. It was not the moon or the stars that helped him see his way, it was the candle in his precious box that lit the darkness around and showed him the way out of the building of despair into the shore of Life.