People all over the world say they have never seen God. But [i]I've[/i] met him. 

He is a box. 

Six inches on every side and completely closed. He is made of cardboard, a darker shade of brown than most. Very light too, like picking up an empty box of Kleenex. Though his edges are a little worn, now. You can still see the stain from when I spilled milk on him. His one side is wrinkled and poofy; I had forgotten he was in the basement and it flooded. I was on vacation. 

I didn't ask to meet him. That was the day I received a C in Quantum Mechanics, dropping my GPA below a three-point-five and losing Cum Laude for graduation. I suppose it's what you get for talking your professor out of a final exam and into a final project. It's too bad when standing at the gates of Hell you can't tell which side you're on. Best not to jump the wall. 

I was cleaning off my desk and there he was, just sitting there. 

At least, I'm assuming he was. I don't really remember; a box was a box and I went to trash it. 

"Please don't throw me away."

That somehow made sense, you know, a box talking to me. 

"Why."

"I don't want to be."

"What are you."

"I am God."

"...You're a box."

"Yes."

I thought for a moment, and asked, "Can you convince my professor to give me a B? ...Please."

"I cannot."

"[i]Why not[/i]? You said you were God."

"Yes. But I am only a box."

I am only a box. Those words are my epitaph. Shave my head and carve them into my skull. Paint the walls. I love you, don't ask me favors, God help me I am only a box!

I never did throw him away. 

He didn't like talking much. Or I didn't. Sometimes we'd go weeks or months without speaking. He would sit on my desk, inching backwards as stacks of books I bought but never read rose like untrimmed grass. 

I liked to carry him around the house with me. Mostly after I moved out. Took me six years to do that. A college degree takes four years to attain. It takes a lifetime to mourn. I asked him for a job in my field. Anywhere, even the beaker closet at a lab. Please, always please. 

"I am only a box."

Yes. He was. And I threw him across the room many times to prove it. 

Oddly, he would never talk to others. And I hated that.  

"Why don't you ever speak up when I tell my friends God is real? They roll their eyes and tell me about science."

"Science is good."

"But they don't have their science sitting with them on their desk."

"What could I say?"

"You're only a box."

"Yes."

For the first year in my apartment I prayed to him at night, usually silently but sometimes aloud. He never really said anything. In my next apartment I lost him for nearly three years, until I was fired from my job at the mall. He was easy to find after that. 

He made a half decent door jam for my office door which never stayed open. He propped up windows, held papers down in the wind and made a nice stand for potted flowers. 

I never cried to him but once, when Sally cheated on me after three years. By then my apartment was a house, I had shelves of unread books, and frequent back pain. Now, I see my cardiologist three times a year, and I read the nutritional facts on the sides of instant mashed potatoes. 

God sits on my living room bookshelf, where he has the last five years. 

Did you know? I thought once about cutting him open. What would be inside, who would step out? I held him in one trembling hand, a knife in the other. I thought he might say something like he once did: "Please don't cut me open. I don't want to be." But he never did. My parrot had lost its voice. 

I often think about that moment, while I lay awake in the middle of the night, contemplating more sleeping aids. All I can hear is what sounds like scratchings at walls of paper, and a calm, even-keeled voice saying over and over, into infinity, "I am only a box, I am only a box."

I am only a box.