The Locked Box - SCP Foundation

Hi, it's Floorboards. This was my first post on the site. It came from a simpler time in my life. I'm still proud of it. I hope my life gets simpler again. Love you.

The Locked Box

By: FLOORBOARDS

Published on 12 Apr 2022 00:05

Before you are three grey boxes, bearing identical rusty locks. Atop them, written in red lettering, their titles: "safe," "euclid," and "keter."1 You can hear the gentle hum of a forgotten experience inside each one; the flow of nighttime traffic, the chirping of morning birds, the patter of footsteps on grass. You fish around in your pocket until you find what you need: three golden keys.

safe

The assortment obscures your vision

A cool breeze whips over the top most pillow

You are nesting, curled into a defensive ball

Wrapped under a cotton cocoon on a black summer night.

A fortress: a stack of decorative pillows

And weighted blankets

With an opening above you, like a hole in the sky

The light of passing trucks shines through your window, illuminating your face as it turns upwards at the world.

There’s a loneliness to the changing of the seasons

A promise that the world and all the people in it will keep spinning and spinning and spinning

A promise that all things will change, and sometimes things will stay the same.

You

have

never

felt

more

safe.

euclid

In the cotton candy morning, you stand in the glimmer of the backyard

(if it can be called a backyard, it's all asphalt)

and watch

through the wires and the hills that are houses

the yellowing, widening mouth in the clouds

into a blue, crystal throat.

You carefully slip off your shoes.

You walk down to where the asphalt ends, just beneath the high white wooden fence,

And you stand there, in the corner of the yard, in the one teeny tiny box that has grass.

Before you is a rusted iron gate, and beneath you are ladybugs and worms—and gnats that bite at you, but to swat them away would be purposeless.

You place your hand on the gate and think about the geography of the suburbs. Boxes within boxes within boxes,

You are in a box behind a box, boxed in from other boxes with greener boxes around them

It’s absurd, really…

You look back to the rolling hills that are houses and wish, for once

This world was non-Euclidean

And it would bend backwards in a way

So you could just

Perfectly

See the clouds part

And show you the sun.

keter

In the waning afternoon,

You are walking beside an intersection

The busiest road in the whole village, right in front of your partner’s house

And as you turn one last time,

There

In the green grass

A brown bird.

His feathers are sleek and shimmering

And his beady black eyes, like glasses, sit above his beak

He is on his side, and legs are broken

And so is his wing.

You scramble: Please don't be dead

Lifting your flannel from your shoulders, you produce

A fortress, with an opening above the avian like a hole in the sky.

Lifting him quickly, his shallow breaths match your own as you take off;

Good, good, he's breathing

And as quickly as his chest moves up and down, you realize

I should not be able to see him breathe

And a helplessness envelopes you as he speaks:

Chirrup,

chirrup,

chirrup

Then

silence.

You bury him there; a shrine of dirt and flowers, and your thoughts wander

There was nothing you could do for him

But it dawns on you at least you were there

And even in his final words to you, in some language

In some way

You knew what he said:

Thank you; I love you

And you know one day you will watch him float in an open sky

And for you, he will unfurl a banner of parchment, before facing away

And swimming through the air, with his powerful wings, into that final wherever.

As the darkness of another summer night closes around you

You proclaim this sparrow's name:

Keter, the crown

The golden brown beauty you held in your hands

That now you will always carry on your back

Always.

You gently set the lid back down. With a sharp twist, the third box is locked again. Satisfied, you turn to the door behind you, and press it open with your left hand. Light fills the nearly forgotten storage unit as you step off into somewhere else.

Author's Note

Hide Author's Note

This trilogy of poems was a simple exercise, but one I feel very brave for partaking.

I have done two things here which I have never done before. For one, I posted on the SCP Foundation website for the first time, after years and years of lurking. For two, I wrote free verse poetry for the first time since middle school.

Free verse is a difficult tightrope to walk upon. There is a certain point where you must ask yourself, can this not be portrayed with prose?, where you must question the delivery and the medium itself. To offset this, I took it upon myself to maintain some lyrical integrity. A vast majority of my work is inspired by the lyricism of Will Toledo, the lead singer of Car Seat Headrest and 1 Trait Danger; in particular, I have attempted to mimic the shifting schemes of Boxing Day, a beautiful emo song which brings back early memories of basement jamming and pretending to like pretentious prog rock (I still love prog rock, but you know what I'm talking about).

In that vein, I wished to draw upon only my memories. I would bare myself and my feelings to the website, allow them to look into my skull for a little while, and then depart safely. This has been immensely satisfying for me; not only has it allowed me to share the small pleasures of my life, but it has allowed others to partake in them.

I don't care about the "upvotes," but I enjoy the knowledge that my writing has touched someone, anyone, somewhere, anywhere. If this has connected with you on any level, I highly encourage you to share your experiences with someone else as well.

Be it through poetry, prose, or a drawing, unlock the boxes in your heart and mind and allow a little bit of your innermost self to shine through. You might be surprised at who your light shines on! ~Shuck & Roxy

Footnotes

1. Content warning: This memory prominently features animal death.