Think Outside the Box

The box now huddles in the corner, empty.  Its contents, having provided solace to so many people, now discarded in the small plastic basket below.  There was the middle aged librarian type who had nervously perched on the brown vinyl sofa.  Her eyes, normally so quick to seek out those needing assistance, seemed glazed over as if to say, "I'm sorry. I am fresh out of answers today.  I only have questions myself."  Occasionally, she uncrossed her legs only to recross them again in the opposite direction, her sensible shoes focusing her attention to another part of the room.  Her eyes would then shift to the utilitarian watch fastened to her left wrist.  Deep breath in, deep breath out.  A small tear welled in the corner of her left eye and drifted down the puffy ashen white cheek as she waited.

Yesterday, a toddler howled in pain as a blue towel wrapped around his head turned purple.  He had cut his head on a sharp corner of  his mother's coffee table that was strewn with Seventeen magazines and ashtrays filled with Marlboro Lights and Mountain Dew bottle caps.  After many coos from his young, frightened mother, the boy's shrieks quieted to hiccupping sobs as his wet faced buried into her breast.

Today, an older man takes the final tissue taken from the Kleenex box to blow his nose.  He flinches as he dabs his bulbous red nose and lets out a heavily congested breath.  While his is the least serious ailment, the tissue still provides a barrier from others who silently wonder why he is waiting here.