A metaphor

But first, recent events.
I was graced by Alan's presence from around 8:00 on Friday till 4:00 on Sunday. I'm the kind of person who wants things to go according to the original plan, and get antsy, frusterated, upset, or angry when they don't. I have to say I feared my weekend was doomed when thing after thing after thing came up and hardly any of my original weekend plan was left. However, to my great pleasure, the weekend turned out to be much more than I expected, and I can say that both Alan and I enjoyed our time together very much. We watched movies, we baked (carrot cake--one of his favorites), we took a forest backtrail stroll, we made up absurdly silly songs with my siblings; we were happy to be together again.
He's gone now. And once again I am lonely. No matter how many times I've done it, no matter how long or short the time between, no matter how close or far away he will be, seeing him go never gets easy.
3 weeks is how long I will wait again. I hope I make it.

So, now the title's sake.

Fire up your imaginations, and set the setting to a room full of displays. Boxes of chocolate and candies, of all sorts and sizes, and in different boxes and other presentations. There are square boxes, circle boxes, triangle boxes, amorphous boxes. They come many colors, from pastel to shaded, bright to neutral, warm hues, cool hues, hardly any hues. Some are ornately ribboned, sequinned, buttoned, glittered, or rather plain. Some satin, some wood, some velvet, some paper and cardboard. Some come with pictures, some play music when opened, some don't offer any additional entertainment. In short, every box you can possibly concieve, and no two are identical. And this is just the packaging.
Open up the boxes to see what they really can offer. Milk chocolates, dark ganache truffles. caramels, candied fruit or flowers, chocolate-covered nuts, white chocolates, toffees, taffies, liqueur candies, vanilla candies, fruit flavored candies, small cookies, chocolate mints, peppermints, and other sweet confections.
The way the candies and boxes match up is lots of guesswork. Sometimes you will look at a light pink, ribboned box expecting to find something sweet and delicate inside, and sure enough you find white chocolate raspberry truffles. Sometimes you'll find something unexpected. A lavishly decorated deep blue velvet box only contains a few plain milk chocolate candies that don't recall ingredients of high quality. Sometimes they decieve you--a harmless yellow plastic box will contain chocolates that taste like they've been cooked with sewar water. Some are very bizarre--a hexegon black and plastic-spiked box with chocolates that suspiciously taste like animal blood. And then there are those that look plain from the outside, but surprise you with something delicious inside.
Wandering around this vast room to the back, there is a box which looks... a little plain. It's oval shaped, light pink, and has a thin, red velvet ribbon bordering the edges. It's got a little ribbon rose right over the center of the edge of the lid. Compared to the elegance and flashiness of the first boxes you layed eyes on (naturally, at the ver front of the room), it's nothing much. Most would pass it by without taking a look at what's inside. There is a trick to this box too. You open the lid at first, and you see nothing more than a few small butter cookies, some dipped in dark chocolate. Again, nothing too special, even if they are tasty. Not too many people bother to open the second lid... because amoung the fine red velet lining are extremely rich chocolates... not to be eaten casually or all at once, but to slowly allow them to melt and fill your mouth with dark sweetness.
(This sounded better in my mind. Bear with me)
For those of you who have seen both lids open, hooray for you.