To have in a head the idea of a story. The bones and muscle
of it all flexing like a body newly waked and unsure of its own
limitations. Unsure of the points where, yes, this fingertip ends
here and what is felt there is the space where skin does not turn
into low thread count fabric, but joins the surface of the media
and feels. The space where the idea of being's is ends and
affectation, the extension of the being, begins. The relationship
between the end of existence and the beginning of
something unpredictable.
I have been staring at a breast. A woman is trying to
figure out what brand of food her cat will find acceptable and
toying with the idea that it is, after all, an animal and dissecting
within herself the reasons why she should care if the pate is premium
or not, because the cat will not starve itself longer than it has to,
but I can see it is a losing battle because she wants the cat to be
happy in a way it would not otherwise be without someone
to fawn over it and she grasps that there is no difference
to the animal, but the difference only exists within herself and
it perplexes us both. Her reaching
for the top shelf.
As I stare at the breast, the woman in tow, the tattoos
trying their best to be colorful plumage half hidden by
the flora of Friday night "things to do, if only you knew"
question beggar's sweat suit fronds, I find it harder than
the question of enabled cats to grasp the question of
what it is men see in the cup or two of fat poking up
where clothing ended too soon for the weather we are having
outdoors. Maybe in another season I would
clap her on the back and exchange something like a "good job
with the tits there" in so many, and different, words, but now
I am just weirded.
The appeal is long gone with my own changes and the logic
slips by like a wet plastic shopping bag in a work clawed hand
wishing I lived closer to the grocery store and hoping
the miles slip by with speed before I lose my grip and
demand answers from an inanimate object. She takes a step toward
the right and my vision focuses new, still fixed, on the previously obscured
face of a ten year old girl who has been watching me wrestle
with nonsense and compunctions of orientation and motives
far longer than I realized a ten year old
could fix on anything.
I am reminded of a story I wanted to tell as our eyes meet and discuss
several a many thing in a span of seconds before she realizes
her mother has moved again along the aisle of packaged meat
and she is expected and quite possibly late of course
for what could be the umpteenth and deciding time for a trip
to the wonderland of the cookie aisle. I smiled and waved back.
The cat food woman sashays beyond me to the foot locker of foibles
to perhaps be drawn upon for later character sketches and
I am left to wonder,
left to hope that maybe in the time she spent she caught
a reflection of what I still chase and what she still has to learn to hate
or may never have an opportunity to and instead be, besides,
but beyond the paper lion and the twig mouse I am reminded
of a story I wanted to tell, as her face came into focus and trotted away,
about a time when I saw a man look at me with fusion in his eyes
when I was too young to remember and it ended
where the divide between memory and memorial stones build walls
too high to see above. I want to be remembered in the way
I can't remember my own. I want to be apart. More than anything
apart from the story.
