Page 31 - October 2020

Radical

Kelle Grace Gaddis

I used to think life inside the box was good. We had four walls, a sturdy floor, and a
ceiling that, even though I bumped my head, it never rendered me unconscious.
When younger, I kept my head down, worked hard, and expected to be rewarded.
The older I got, the less I liked the box. It was a pain in the neck figuratively and
metaphorically. By forty, I’d hit my head on its ceiling so many times I’d begun to
stoop. Like the majority of older women inside the box my mother was permanently
stooped. She said it was osteoporosis, but everyone knew it was the box.
~
Early on I noticed there weren’t any female CEOs in the box. If a woman were set to
rise to that level, they’d be cast out for talking too much, wearing a provocative

suit, or for no reason at all. Whatever the cost, I wanted better for my daughter Lily
and I.
~
Men talked about thinking outside the box, but never in detail when we women
were present, quickly changing the topic to beard maintenance or sports. In time,
we decided they no longer mattered to us. Equity for women is what fired us up.
~
I held secret meetings with my female coworkers. We grew in number until it wasn’t
just the women from the office but housewives, women who’d never stepped foot
inside a corporation, were now thinking outside the box.
~

Kelle Grace Gaddis is the author of two books My Myths (Yellow
Chair Review) and When I’m Not Myself (Cyberwit). She was a
Tupelo Press 30/30 Writer in 2018, and a 4Culture “Poetry on the
Buses” contest winner in 2015 and 2017. Finalist in the NYC Flash
Fiction Contest in 2019.