Are we more than carbon and chemicals?

All of that yarn, it's still unwound. My history is all criss-crossed and scattered around your ankles, and I'm petrified you are going to trip. If I try to look away, whatever polar metals in my blood pull towards you and I'm helpless to stop.

I saw you when I didn't even look. There is a plane coming in to land right now, and I'm trying to understand how it does this. Behind me, the city burns and smolders. Fire is the only thing that can eliminate some things, reducing years worth of emotions and sweat to the plainest of things; reducing all those chemicals that make up memories into something as ordinary and essential as carbon. I can't see him anymore. I try to remember the tone of his laugh and I only hear yours.

It's been torched to the ground. That city. The monument in the park downtown erected to the day I held his hand. That street I walked down when I discovered his pointy hipbones. All those memories. All those skin cells. Carbon.

If I look at it, I might panic. The place where the city once stood - just a sooty pile. I briefly wonder if that aeroplane was from Chicago in 1871. I wonder if this is how the Trojans felt the day after that mysterious horse showed up at their gates. Where did they all go after their city was gone? Where did he go?

I get back into my car. I drive away from the cremated city. Above me, breaking through the scattered clouds, I see the meteor shower that we didn't watch. Inside my hearts swells and boils. I step hard on the gas; shift into fifth gear. I'm careening over a hill and when I break the crest I stomp hard on the break and let out a monumental gasp. In front of me, growing up around our house is a city. It glows like Las Vegas.

In the center of that glowing city is our house. And in the center of our house is our bed.

I have to go there. The magnets pull. Cadmium desire for nickel.



with love and squalor,
ekw