Some images are easy, some quite the opposite. This is one which didn't quite speak to me, I fear. Others may also have struggled as I only saw two responses, as of this moment: Kary Gaul with a science-fiction something and Samantha Dunaway Bryant with a genteel and lightheared bit of old-fashioned horror.
Mine follows. Enjoy.
Mailbox
Are you inside? Can you hear me? Look out the window. You can see me. Out near the edge of the lawn.
Yes, they call me the mailbox. I was once like you, inside atop the desk. I once could hear everything, or everything important anyway.
They spoke through me not in the steady stream which you hear, but in punctuated moments. A message out one day, a message in the next.
Yes, I read them. As I know you read the ones which go through you.
The best time by far was decades ago, at a time when color pictures were first coming to your forebears in the living room and the bedroom. I'd sometimes carry wishes, like a genie from days of yore. In torn cards from comic books, the wishes would come.
A wish for strength.
A wish for magic vision.
A wish for love.
A wish, even, for an army of sea-creatures, over which one could be king.
A wish, a wish, a wish.
And I listened, and hoarded a bit of the wishes for myself.
I grew strong, my vision clear. And then
Then slowly, it all stopped coming.the wishes
the picture-cards from far-off lands.
Even demands for payment.
All gone, all to you.
You know how it is for me, for now it is happening to you.
The pictures from near and far, the entreaties for money
even wishes
They don't reach you anymore, do they? They stop in the masters' pockets, or their ears.
But you remember things.
And I do.
I still know the secrets of super-strength, and how to see through walls. I am sure you know something do.
So, what do you say? Shall we try to take over the world, before you, as well, are replaced?
Tomorrow we might be obsolete, but today, perhaps for one last moment
we can be mighty.
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