98 Wounds by Justin Chin Page B

box of your columbarium, the box of ashes, the box of papers and artifacts sitting on a shelf.
    And you think about all the boxes you’ve tried to write and live yourself out of, and all the boxes other people have tried – successfully or un – to herd you into, and the boxes that you willingly climbed into, all the boxes you’ve struggled against, or made cozy with.
    Funny isn’t it, how everyone believes themselves to be “out of the box” thinkers? You don’t ever hear anyone declaring, I think inside the box. Maybe in-the-box types aren’t given to making declarations about themselves; they would have to think outside the box to do that.
    Then there is the other box, the more prurient one: the ones you really wanted to get into, and your own which you’ll gladly fold the flaps out open for whomever.
    Does all living lead into a box of some sort? Is it futile to think that one is ever free of the box? Hey, so… why is the mime trapped in a box? No, seriously, this is not a set-up for a punchline. Why is the mime trapped in a box? Of all the standard mime tricks, this one stands apart.
    The wall is understandable, we fall walls everyday of our lives. People pull on rope all the time, they climb ladders, they lean against things, they lift stuff, they eat sloppily. All these are common everyday acts, rooted in their normalcy, you may find yourself doing any one of these things. You may even find yourself struggling against the wind with your umbrella on some stormy day. But how often does one find oneself stuck in a box?
    And it’s a box. It’s not all that sturdy. Even if you’re stuck in a high-class box, it’s still cardboard. But even if it were wooden, if you push against it, brace and bare against the sides, it’ll come apart. If you’re trapped in a cardboard box and are too weak and puny to push your way out, just take a piss and it’ll sag and come apart.

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    T HINGS T HAT S OUND D ELIGHTFULLY O BSCENE BUT A REN ’ T A T A LL
    Tittle, Umlaut, Glottal, Cockmaster, Titchy, Sloppy, Lorem Ipsum.

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    T HINGS T HAT S OUND D ELIGHTFULLY O BSCENE BUT A REN ’ T E VEN W HEN T HEY A RE
    Jarns, Nittles, Quimps, Grawlix.

    * * *
    There is a kind of euphoria in grief, a degree of madness, unspoken and unacknowledged, an undercurrent that fueled the survivors.
    This was a time when we still grieved in our own rooms, real or imagined, shared or squatted. We valued and stubbornly held on to the dignity we could feel slipping away. This was a time when we still had our private lives. When being a shameless whore or hussy was an action deliberately taken. It was beautiful work and the quality of the shamelessness, the effrontery of the brazenness, was all the more richer and dazzling for the effort put behind it.
    None of that national mourning, that showy community grieving that we find so commonplace these days. None of those garish roadside shrines, each one competing with the next for more stuffed animals, more plastic flowers, more ink-jet printed photos, or in a brilliant trumping move, stuffed animals and plastic flowers together encased in a balloon held aloft by a plastic rod.
    Real Simple magazine would recommend Ash (home-ground, of course) and Sackcloth (easily home-rendered as well.) It’s all you need.
    Many years ago, a neighbor back home had died and the wake was held in the house’s living room. Every day for a week, in the evening, a small silver van would pull up and a group of black clad women would get out of the van and proceed into the house. And then it began. The loudest, wailing-est, most screeching and terrifying screams and sobbing and crying ever heard. Professional mourners. Every day from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., except for Friday and Saturday which was from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday was a day off, of course. And at 7 p.m. or 2 p.m. on the dot, the bawling stopped as instantly as it started, as if someone had