Aishamanne Williams
The Box Today made three years since Sage’s father gave her the box. It sat now where it had been stationery since then, on the far right corner of her desk closest to her bed, collecting dust, memories and the fingerprints of basketball players. For some reason it made her skin crawl when women touched the box—even a lingering glance from Alice last week made Sage want to grab the box off the desk and chuck it out of the window. She hated when men touched or acknowledged it too, just a little less. She let their questions float smoothly away like a cloud passing through the sky. What’s in that box? Come see what’s in this one. It usually only crossed their minds when they were lying in Sage’s bed; she would hope that the weight of her curves atop their frame, her pink sugar Arabic perfume oil from Harlem, and her thick hair tickling against their skin would be suffice distractions from the haunting rectangle in the corner of their eye. But male curiosity tended to prevail. Dwyer asked about it once. It made her feel almost the way she did when women asked: defensive, exhausted, disturbed, exposed. Those, and something new. Cornered. 6
