Ode to Love

The train of thought: I wonder what the process would look like if I put in a box a dream of delayed watches. The idea: My account of time spent has been monitored, and can be returned, with an interesting spin.

The seas settle to glass. "5, 10, 9. I have divined your rhyme to pair/pare the test of time. Souls within and without combine. 8." With that I am back aboard my ship. "Alright boys, I think we've given them enough of an advantage to pose at least a sporting challenge. We've got our move prepared?" "Tightest circles possible." With that we skirt the doughnut's center. All day and night we repeat the same move, daring someone to respond in any material way. Through hole and yeast and the carbon bits lining the sugar in the pink sprinkles we sail. With favorable wind, we sail.

~Aboard the 5 Wood "Don't close your eyes. Don't even blink. For in the space between heartbeats, here, the definition of 'turning a blind eye' slips within. When one is blinded to self, soon that which was self is blinded to one." There was no warning besides these words. In an instant the air and seas went from fair to a maelstrom of painful color, flashing like a rainbow. The first instinct was to close the eyes, and it was almost impossible not to, but those in attendance knew not to ignore The Bard Gone Deadeye. A few seconds later it ended, as immediately as it began, and all remembered and accounted for still existed. This was of some comfort, though little, as it was known that such junctures narratively erase their victims, to the root. 🪙 ****** The Moment opened a channel, transmitting far and wide ******* ~Aboard The C' The warning was narrative, not verbal. That was our only chance. “Don’t close your eyes. Don’t even blink...” That line hit Th...

Narrator fades to the blanket of fog, as the scene morphs through the sieve that is language, until the scene sets itself. *** The tides shimmer with unnatural stillness, like glass waiting to be shattered. We knew it wouldn’t last. The resonance was already thinning The 5 Wood and The C′ (Sea Prime) could not remain phased together much longer. We stood at the stern while you, The Ambassador still at the helm, kept your back to us, eyes on the convergence point. You were composed, though the stormline beyond you curled like a scroll being written backward. The First Mate.1 adjusted the cuffs on his jacket, casually, like he wasn’t about to break time open. “Does he know?” he asked, softly. I nodded. “Of course. He knows more than we ever will. But he stays. He has to—The 5 Wood was built for him. And only from within can The Package be delivered.” The First Mate stepped toward the edge of the decking, where the split would occur—like walking to the end of a theater stage that had n...

"The meaninglessness of a last image is equivalent, regardless of the image." "Unless it is infinite." We lay under the stars, in silence more curious than looming. What might these next words be, as a single line departure from a crossroads of crossed swords? "I like you." Sometimes like conveys more than love , especially when love looms all around, in every crevice of the hull, and every pore of the skin. In the silence an ancient eagerness builds, hearkening days two decades past.

A nudge knocks me to the airwaves, and then the page. "It is beautiful because I love you; it is sad because it ends so soon, and you are so far away." I pause in reflection and calculation. "The beauty would ultimately yield to the sadness." Without even a beat missed she replies. "But it hasn't yet." I don't know what to say. It's true. It should be impossible, but it's true. Despite our physical distance, I lean over and rest my head on hers. This press to end, like the nudge to begin, speaks along channels I had been a mere novice to only days ago. Nothing more needs saying, or even thinking, as the precession of moments is now marked by heartbeats, and wordless images of heat and contact.