write, whatever, whenever

He waits and waits
For the weight of the moment
To hit him, transform him.

“This is it,” he thinks, “this must be it,
All the other signs are there,”
He thinks and he waits
For the wrench of the heart,
Flight of the doubt,
Freeing of the mind,
But instead there is
Nothing… nothing but silence,
A familiar silence.

She sits there
On the tall pointy chair,
Facing the crowd.

You can see glimpses of
her bright running shoes
underneath the long lazy robe
cheerfully waving at you

And she sits there
bored, unamused,
detached from the crowd she is facing.

She looks for a sign;
Browsing the bland ceiling,
The windows, the rows upon rows of mostly occupied benches
for something that is not there.

She sits there
And waits for her turn
- This is her turn -
To offer bread and wine
To those seeking redemption, connection, recognition.

She can’t get it out of her head, the image:
Him standing there, certain
a certainty that only comes from
Power; “Did he have any?” She wonders.
Never bothered to tell him, of course
About power as a concept

And now, nights later,
as she slowly
approaches the hare
He, of all creatures,
has plagued her mind

She knows it will happen,
The hare has no chance, strolling half-asleep
(In this world, one needs
All her senses to survive)
- She can almost taste the blood,
as she gets closer -
But hunger is not
what drives her,
Normalcy is.

The tiger salamander
approaches the bobcat
and yells his lungs out:
“BOW!”

Her ear twitches, but not the head
Too busy tending a bruise
that has been bothering her all day
“maybe something is stuck in there,” she thinks to herself
and inspects her paw, very thoroughly

Salamander gets closer, establishes all four feet
on a solid rock, adjusts her posture, and repeats:
“BOW!”

This time the bobcat
suspects something
turns her head around, if only a little
and gives him a lazy look
- like any sensible cat would do -
not belittling, but dismissive

Not shaken a bit, he looks her in the eye
and affirms his presence, if a bit louder:
“BOW, NOW!”

She goes back to her paw;
“maybe something is stuck in there,” she thinks to herself.

He was stabbed
three separate times
and each time
they took some organ out
and replaced it with something
something plastic, foreign

“It sounds like bad plumbing
when I drink water,”
he says and chuckles
surprisingly cheerful
for the situation he’s in -
still waiting for cuts to heal
the cut from some passer-by
and the cut from the doctor
trying to fix him, and succeeding, mostly -

He doesn’t ask why
and keeps all there might be in his head
in his head