Taste Buds

Hi, reader.

Sitting on my desk are two packets of liquid. They are filled with flavor. Flavors I chose not to ingest, flavors I decided I didn't need, but two I would recommend to anyone looking for something arousing. They aren't bad. They just didn't fit into my plan. So they became garbage.

I should keep them. I should put them away in a drawer or on a shelf or on the right ink alignment. If I were following the organization blogs, I'd tumble them right into a plastic baggie, freezer quality. To store for later.

Because that's the genesis of hope: later.

The drawer I have picked is full of junk. So much so that that junk is the name the drawer has earned. The Junk Drawer. A catch-all. It exists for one purpose and one purpose only: I might need this later. Mine has tape, several kinds, and matches, and menus, several kinds, and rubberbands, and a vagabond allen wrench or two. And sauce packets. Lots of sauce packets.

Potential energy. Look it up.

Potential energy is stored capacity. It's work to be done. It's a coiled spring. A stretched rubberband. It's physics.

Unread words.

Potential energy is what dissipates when time insists we make a decision. It's what would have happened. It's the ghost of hope.

It's what dies.

Why is it that when I think of love I think of the ripples of no? I think of the denial of want. Why do I bleed desire? Why is it that the only emotion that's the color red is the one I see first? I see so many more. I don't care about so many more. All of it is.

Except it's not.

Us humans. Us weeping, crying, sniffling, touching, pretending, hiding, wanting, needing, loving humans, we ooze tears and joy and other fluids, which is why we blend so well together...

We are osmosis. Diffusion. Whatever that fucking word is.

That's what smiles are. Melting particles. It's why smiles cause love, and war.

Chemistry.

Taste. Flavor.

Put away for later.

PS whenever I write you I smell the odor of flame and snowflakes. The odor of comfort.