I Wish You Would

It’s easy to fall, that’s the popular belief, but I think sometimes you have to work at it.   To fall you have to let go.

She didn’t want to but there seemed to be no other choice.

“I woke up.   I went to sleep.   I painted the walls rust to match my blood.”   There is forever this delicate balance to maintain?   Then you fall, you trip, or get pushed (accidentally on purpose) like the Roman Empire.

“You have the standard edition, right?   The one with the inelegant stain?”

I was looking for my reading glasses, it was a vision quest.   She had left me a neolithic candle & a 16th century book of curses.

[ The Flashback reveals what we’ve suspected from the start—   she has complicated shoes.]

Horizontal bars of light & shadow on the wall, late afternoon sun streaming in through venetian blinds.   The business with the needle is drawn out for an incredibly long time in a series of tight close-up shots.   It’s like watching a rose blossom unfold in real time.   When the scene is finally over half the audience has left or fallen asleep.

As the day winds down she appears to various people simultaneously;  on the pier, in the supermarket, holding a shovel in someone’s backyard, standing on the highway hitch-hiking with a handwritten cardboard sign that reads “Yesterday”.

The speed of light, something about time travel, a time machine, warp speed, a glitch.   How time got here & where had it been?   The Wayback Machine.   This is a dark place where nothing happens.   This is a place blasted with light where everything happens.   Dries clear.   Never needs ironing.