Show me how to look forward to these things. To see them and pursue. It is something to bark like a dog barks. It is something to wade in the snow like a chicken, lost. My hands don’t feel their fingers, and so my answers come but do not grasp the reason for their caring. Still they care. They take long baths and watch the mud run without spinning down a drain dead center between a world where I breathe under water, and a world where water is the substance of my skin.
They’ll fix it if we’re not careful. They’ll fix us to it. They’ll come no bigger than we expect, but more colorful, and they’ll use strange tools to pin our eyes apart until all we can see is each other, an alien, and the path to enlightenment. Don’t take it you’ll say. I’ll run ahead, trying to catch up with my hands. But it’s all in perspective, I’ll say, laughing. Later we’ll build a house on a long, blank pasture and wait for our livestock to find their way back past the use they’ve been put to.
The warmth on my leg is this generation. The blankness I see is the next. These things scare me, a little, but I’m largely prepared. I’ve taken all the appropriate notes. I’ve followed the small child down the hall with his bathroom pass into the teachers’ lounge. Wood meets metal on a desk, asks for clemency, and gets screwed. Gouges on the floor remark casually about gaps in the mind. That is a flower print dress. That is a pencil unsharpened. This is the first drop of sweat down my back.
We work to wait, are filled with nothing coming. We sea the breeze before we sail it awkward into some wet future. We are snake and shudder, ply, a practice, a certain order. We are fixed. Are from some fixture. Are unfrom. See? Please, do not ask about us. Do not wick that fickle gesture. Do we need to bend this talent backwards? Do we need to open further than feels natural? Try this: place one hand above us and one hand below, and see which feels something first.
I’m all for emolument. Absence. Think of it differently. Think of a horse walking into your life. Now close your eyes. It says, Father. It says, Stampede. It says we’ll never live like this again. Let’s move on. Have you read about the recent killings in Kansas? Mostly people who asked for something better without knowing a better way to ask. This hardly seems fair, but doubtless is. A gift is a hint that doesn’t stick around to see if you get it.
There are a lot of people out there who think I should take my head out of this toaster oven. This one’s for you, b/c what you’re doing is dangerous. This is a very delicate procedure and it takes all of my concentration, not to mention confidence. My fingers are swollen on the outside, from all the rubbing, but I can reach the cord if I really want to. I can reach the silverware drawer too, so let that be a warning. I told you I’d remodel the kitchen, damn it, and I’m starting with the definition of heat.
