Protocols

The ring's on the wrong finger. I've been watching you for an hour and I've decided that the ring is on the wrong finger. After all, if you're stranded in a terminal and not on the phone with her, the ring must be on the wrong finger.

You'll seal my doubts with eyes closed. I'm sure of that. I'll be airborne, not accountable. Just a few bites and I'll grow bigger than all this. Just a sip, and you'll evaporate.

How long did Alice fall? How far? She's watching flower petals flirt with caterpillars. They're more dangerous than pollen and that's exciting.

Flap your petals twice and look away. He'll buy you a drink. He'll pluck your love-mes and your love-me-nots. He'll paint you red.

The condition is apathy. The disease is forgetting.

There are blond and blue bruises on our perfect misconceptions of self. My short and stout will march along your tall and narrow and the six pointed guns will read us just the same.

Actualized maybes are merciless.

I've been listening to the sound of moving air. Your hands stretch forward, pushing into my lungs, crossing my borders, muffling my voice with your seductive propaganda. Fact and fiction wrestle and fall, tangled under the bedspread of your charisma. We're becoming idolators and our lust is sanctified. You say we're entitled to our overindulgence but you haven't tasted sweat. You haven't tasted fear. You haven't tasted immigration, or perishing, or survival, or not.

I am a first generation novice. I haven't learned how to forget.