Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Hot and Cold (04/09/09)
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TITLE: Treasures | Previous Challenge Entry
By Cecile Hurst
04/14/09 -
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The smell of the cold open earth and a family minus one, gathered around a dark and seemingly never ending hole. Sunlight glared off the glazed wood, off tears falling down cheeks and off mother’s diamond ring. They had lowered him slowly, delicately. They had lowered that box as though it contained a bomb. Then they had each gathered up dirt in their hands and dropped the clumps – tiny explosions – into that great gaping hole. Miri had stood, still and listening, to her brother wailing for them to let him out. Let him go. She clenched her dirty hands. He just wanted to go home…
“I just want to go home,” Seth had cried – tears sparkling under glaring hospital lights.
“We know baby, we know – soon okay?”
Her mother’s words choked off and that’s when she had figured they were lying; and she had been right. Seth didn’t go home. Seth never came home. The whole thing was confusing because everyone kept saying he had gone home. They said things like “This body is just a box – Seth is outside that box now. Home at last.” It made Miri so angry! She had seen him! They had put his body into a box and the box into that hole in the earth and he had never come home!
“No he’s not! No he didn’t! I saw you, I saw you! I hate you!” Miri had yelled, pounding small harmless fists against her father’s chest and her father had never moved, never said a word…
“Come on Seth!”
“Nope! Not a word!”
“It’s too hard…” Miri whined.
“You’re a terrible pirate!”
“Pirates get treasure maps you know.”
“Okay fine. I’ll do hot - cold.”
“Okay… here?”
“Cold – freezing! You’ve got icicles coming out your nose!”
Miri wiped her nose unconsciously and inched left.
“If it’s possible, you’ve just gotten colder.”
She jumped to the right.
“Warmer.”
She walked…
“Warmer.”
More…
“Getting hotter – whew!”
She made a dart for the tree house.
“Colder,” Seth snickered.
“Seth!” she stamped her foot impatiently.
“Miriam!” he taunted back.
She walked back towards the fence.
“Hot… now you’re very hot.”
Miri started peering into the bushes and then looked back to Seth when he didn’t confirm – back to Seth as he crumpled like a rag doll to the ground…
I tear my eyes away from that place and unclench my fingers from around the box – a box made for me. It had been my birthday.
I flip the latch, lift the lid and close my eyes.
“Dear Jesus,” I pause to pray, feeling that this moment is somehow sacred, “this body is nothing but a box, and I praise You that, as boxes, we can hold treasures for You. Treasures that neither rust, nor corrupt. Treasures that thieves can not steal… I know you didn’t steal Seth…” I bite my lip and rub at my tears with my arm. “I know,” I start again brokenly, “that sometimes my heart is like a game of hot and cold – sometimes loving You and sometimes only loving myself. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of the second. I’m sorry,” I whisper, “I’m sorry. Please help me love You, run towards You – and wax hotter and hotter, and hold Your treasures faithfully until this old box of mine busts open and I can go home too!”
I open my eyes and look inside my treasure box.
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