And they, with delicate hands so very rarely seen and never thanked or held, clear away the silver pudding skin of time and throw all of that delicious stuff, the umami of the spirit, the meat that makes a man from a mouse, a woman from a whisper, back in the pot of what might yet be.
I don’t know why I can still feel you here, why I still observe the calendar with some urgency as if we are approaching anniversaries where we would surely need to meet and celebrate. Me in my horrible dress, you in that wrecked shirt. I give you up to the wind and the earth draws you back and spits you into my path. This is no great destiny, but you gave me comfort and purpose once.
He said nothing, and didn’t pull a pack from his pants pocket the way she’d hoped. Instead, he just stared at her, in that ravenous way of theirs, a way she’d seen up close only once before.
Breaking the painful silence, she snapped open the purse again and pulls a little cigarette and lighter from some secret compartment, and lit it herself with a knowing, blase click. As she inhaled, she considered that his exhaustion and despair left him vulnerable in a way she was not entirely prepared for.
But when what was was up and running, when there was blood and friction and motion to its form, we didn’t think about the skeletal. Nor the physical laws, the carbon dating that would explain what it was about us that was worthy of eons of study. We were in the thick of it.
If it goes, you go, really, with it to the scrap heap. And the robot runs the work, while you nestle without pain into the witch jar of rusted nails and half-broken thumb tacks and sharp memories claimed to be forgotten. You dream in the lemonade, you start floating around with the chili pepper, you burn and reformulate.
Those hopes to exist without risk, without presence or engagement, or bearing the weight of being the object in the lesson, they’re actually as unhelpful as a bathing suit in a blizzard. Because this isn’t that kind of life. As painful as the change thus far has been, it is not even the beginning of it.
In metaphor, good metaphor, you always find a little bit of truth. We say a lot of bullshit, but we wouldn’t say it if we didn’t want you to hear all the little words beneath it. These are the first words we learned. With no extraneous syllables to muddle it up. Me. You. Love. Hurt. Loss. Stop.
I made my own meaning in the absent man dreaming himself to his lover, surprising her with a kiss.
I don’t exactly know what I was thinking. I am flying across the ocean, over thousands and thousands of miles of salty, brackish waters of…
You can look at these men who say they don’t care about reading, they’re real big on weed, sea and otherwise, and exploring moon caves on their jet-powered mountain bikes…men who want to put a slug of coffee in you while they size you up and hurry back to the primordial ooze in case Botticelli picks them out a good one.