Heart in a Box

OPENING

Sweetheart sat in a Tupperware box

For a year

Because she didn’t come to collect it.

Sweetheart-shaped mini Christmas cake, made with love, and lots of cherry brandy,

sat in a Tupperware box

For a year

Because she didn’t come to collect it.

I secretly kept it nearby,

Never opening it, just looking…

Was it decaying like our relationship? A crumbling mess of sugar and spice and all things not nice.

Throwing away the small cake would mean giving up,

It’s saying she will never come.

BUILD-UP

There’s a children’s storybook about three little owls sitting on a branch, waiting for their mother,

‘Where’s my mummy?’ Whines the smallest owl.

‘ She’s coming,’ reassures the biggest chick.

‘She’s gone to get us food,’ says the middle one.

I’ve felt like that little owl all year, trembling on a branch in all weathers, waiting … But I am the mother. I think this is the way of things, though.

ACTION

I hide the Tupperware box with the heart-shaped cake, iced but not sliced, but I still don’t open it. I can’t completely give up hope.

And then, she came. The next Christmas morning, the fence creaked in a deep alto, a sign of the time of year, when the soaked, wet wood and the weight of the climber on it combined to make it groan and sing.

She made a whoosh sound like the owl mother’s wings as she bounded into the hallway holding an empty round Christmas cake tin for the cake I hadn’t made.

RESOLUTION

Boxing Day is all about the Tupperware box. When my husband goes out, I throw the year-old cake in the compost and fill that poor thing with hot, soapy water. I’m going to finish this story. Then this can’t be a poem I never finish. Or is it even that?