Fixtures
Some of the things we do in the dark are so intimate we don’t bring them up after they’re done. Maybe intimate’s not the right word. Intimacy implies faith and the line between there and violence is hard to put a finger on at times. Every night two people who are perfect strangers make like they love each other and two people so in love can’t get enough of each other. Follow the moon tonight and it will follow the same path it did exactly a year ago when you were either more or less happy. Whichever, take solace (which comes as either relief or alarm at one’s own misfortune) that you will never again feel this relieved or alarmed. Sooner or later we’ll find our feet fastened into the same groove year after year like mice whose minds house blueprints that materialized long before we did. We’ll have the patience of light bulbs, neither anxious to be turned on nor aware of the heat we gave off until we’re blown out. We will have sat on benches long enough to scent the difference between cigarettes in late winter and early spring or to memorize the flowers people tend to photograph or to arrive at the exact ratio of night and cold it takes for the leaves to know when to let go. Passersby will recognize us as the types who are forever sitting on benches, which is a kind of immortality if only so short-lived.
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