Electric wires, stretched between long
metal poles, dissect the sky.
Polygons,
bits of blue. A crow perches. Ruffles its wings. Caws. Electric
wires dissect
the sky. A triangle sits at the edge of
a rhombus and together they stare at a circle.
How does a circle cry?
Does it curl up into itself, does it wrap
its arms around its knees? A droplet hangs
from the electric wire. Quivering. Its
journey to earth will be quick,
desperately quick. And
unfree, constrained by gravity. A pull it doesn’t understand.
The crow caws.
There is no wind today.
The leaves hang still, like paintings. The triangle itches at the point where it is touching the rhombus. The triangle wants to detach itself. The triangle is a loner. Enviously, it looks at the circle, nebulous, drifting, swollen. The triangle does not know the circle is crying, because the circle cries quietly.
How does the circle even exist?
Electric wires stretch between long metal poles like lovers’ bodies,
languorous. A woman
napping on a hot afternoon.
A life sags slightly.
This is the beginning, this is the tip. This is where the circle discovers it is pregnant. The circle stares at its center, no longer empty. The sky is so very bright blue.
The sky is so blue, muses the rhombus.
The rhombus wants to sleep, is an old man.
The rhombus has always felt like this, like an old man.
Even at moments like these, when the sky is blue and the triangle is lightly touching. Once,
once this would have been
enough. But not today. Today, the
rhombus wants something more,
something more than arbitrary
contact. If there is meaning
anywhere, in anything, the
rhombus wants it.
Not this, this hanging in space.
Who will arrange these pieces of the sky?
Who will gently slide them into place and wait to hear them click?
Who. Who. Who. Who
will arrange these pieces of the sky? Who will gently slide them into place and wait to hear them click?
Who. Who. Who. The
circle thinks circularly. The circle is now two circles, concentric. The circle feels full, unlike the rhombus.
Electric wires, stretched between cold metal poles, stay there. A lens to look through, a broken map. You pull your knees up as you sit on the edge of your rooftop; you stare, you gaze, unseeing. At the smoke rising from a distant chimney, at a window flung open in a house. At shapes cut by wires, at lives intersecting. You move to scratch your toe and the pieces tumble, spin, tumble apart. Perhaps the circle is a child, miscarries. Perhaps the triangle kisses the rhombus. Perhaps the rhombus dies. Before they are each torn apart and flung, flung away. Into a different puzzle. In the blink of an eye. Another life.