Machinery

Nothing stokes the loneliness fire faster than new hope. It comes in gusts, hope. Sometimes it arrives and leaves with nothing more than a tender glance barely strong enough to arouse a cheek hair in protest to its presence. Other times it appears as if blown from the mighty lungs of Nature herself, a force of sudden, particles beamed urgently as light across the churning world directly into you, pressing, piercing, battering, boring its way in, to set upon you from the inside out.

By the time you command your body to gird itself for the dire new reality of its presence it whisks itself away, dispersing back into the elements, taking your breath and peace with it, leaving only bruises and the slow bleed of red back into your knuckles. That's what hits. Hope is the damage.

Twice. Recently. Twice. It struck. Rocks off cliffs. Such fleeting exchanges. Not even sparks, not even the sound of struck flint. Just the rare ease of lack of fear, the comfort of eye contact into brightly thinking minds. Honest words, simple breathing, smooth hair, the curvature of feminine posture, feet and legs, backs and arms-- beautiful topography, built as if awoken charcoal crawled from an artist's canvas. It's enough to click on the machinery, turn the gears, open the valves. Soft delicate sounds: a piano key brought back to rest, the clack of a clock between tick and tock, the whir of a lace pulled tight, the wet quick whisper of a waffle cone cracking, a bubble snapping back out of existence.

Sand landing.

It was enough. Threshold crossed. The sound woke the baby birds in the nest. Little veiny translucent beaks closing only long enough to rest the tiny muscle that flings them open so that frantic begging can erupt past sharp pointed beaks. Food food food! Now now now!

I speak not of an absence of hope. Our brains are calculators of it and mine has a mind of its own. All it does is calculate. It knows all the answers and not just the right ones. It also knows the wrong ones, millions of them.

One truth exists: There are more ways to screw things up than to get them right. The brain, mine specifically, doesn't distinguish between the two. It just churns. At all hours. All minutes. During precious seconds am I able to fortify against its ticker tape and achieve a moment in the present. I can remember four such moments in the past eight years. It's a big fast belching machine that wants so hard to please its owner that it overproduces the green, ripe and rotten fruit of thought.

This abundance is a curse. If only I could learn to let it not be. My mind is staffed by prison guards in tall towers that execute any emotion brave enough to make a run for it. I need to stop the guards.

Or run faster.

I fantasize about heat trapped under a blanket and eyes across rooms and the clicking of two forks grabbed and synced steps of feet and the silence between words and the flexing sinews of a washing orgasm and the soothing sound of an arrival and the delicate shadow of a hair across the face and the comforting squeeze of a hand about to be squeezed back.

About laughing at nothing and laughing at everything and not doing it alone.

Little bird mouths. Shiny hopeful eyes. Hearts pumping. It is not in their nature to know or understand denial. All they have is an expectation of nourishment.

I never have anything to feed them. I'd rather they slept forever.

I know they won't.