Daughter of Tyche

It’s neither red nor sweet. It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or harden, so it can’t feel pain, yearning, regret. It doesn’t have  a tip to spin on, it isn’t even shapely— just a thick clutch of muscle, lopsided, mute. Still, I feel it inside its cage sounding a dull tattoo: I want, I want— but I can’t open it: there’s no key. I can’t wear it on my sleeve, or tell you from the bottom of it how I feel. Here, it’s all yours, now— but you’ll have to take me, too.

The best part is when we’re tired of it all in the same degree, a fatigue we imagine to be temporary, and we lie near each other, toes touching. What’s done is done, we don’t say, to begin our transaction, each letting go of something without really bringing it to mind until we’re lighter, sicker, older and a current runs between us where our toes touch. It feels unconditional.     2 Remember this, we don't say: The Little Mermaid was able to absorb her tail, refashion it to form legs. This meant that everything’s negotiable and that everything is played out in advance in secret.

What to do with this knowledge  that our living is not guaranteed? Perhaps one day you touch the young branch  of something beautiful. & it grows & grows  despite your birthdays & the death certificate,  & it one day shades the heads of something beautiful  or makes itself useful to the nest. Walk out  of your house, then, believing in this.  Nothing else matters. All above us is the touching  of strangers & parrots,  some of them human,  some of them not human. Listen to me. I am telling you a true thing. This is the only kingdom. The kingdom of touching; the touches of the disappearing, things.