The Box
Lowell Jaeger

​At the office early this morning,
I notice a black plastic box
on the desk adjacent to mine.
Did you touch it? she says, soon
as she’s draped her tattered coat
on the back of her chair.
What is it? I ask, and she says,
Just don’t touch it. This steps across
some line in my brain marking

the limits of my kindness.
Okay, okay, she says, hiding her face
down close to her keyboard,

It’s a positive ion cannon.
It shoots positive ions in the air.
It keeps me happy. I stutter

a failed response, but once
she’s outside for her smoke break,
I lift the damn thing to examine it,

and she catches me shaking it
gently beside my ear. How do you know,
I ask, it’s not just an empty plastic box?

Then, having said what I said,
I hear the pity of it, how
we mistreat each other,

how we earn our pay, rising
day after day to the same lonely
dissatisfactions. I vow

to distance myself from superstitious nonsense
and leave it at that. Then, later, she cradles
the box against her forehead,
and says (as if I’m not within earshot):
I think it’s broken . . . her hands
trembling. Despite my hardened heart,
​
I’m wishing for a shower of positive ions
to fix us. At least as much
might nullify what damage I’ve done.