"Now pull it apart, fast." You said it, not me, talking of mountains of play-doh with technicolor connotations of scarred toys, charred remnants of the earliest of physics experiments, snaggletoothy aspects of "connecting." The words come out with a smile, consistent with, perhaps endemic to the newly undressed and perhaps apropos of anything or everything. (Unfortunately these colors are rarely so evident, except when stuck in a rug of disparate color).

A cafe, Seattle, 1997, it's raining outside but only when we're not out there, mine a seat by the window across from you, against the wall, as is your preference, or at least it was then. The brightness of the world dripping into entropy while you smoke, idly, and I speak into tea cups about a song I heard once when I was someone else entirely and you seem to not care as much as you ever could. Your sweater matches the wet cement, dark grey with too many pulls to be nice anymore but too dressy to fit in anywhere but the vacant coffee shops of the world, full with regulars, which is to say empty but loud with the din of the living; casually crossed arms on the table, bespoke however, show the comfort that defined us but betray maybe a look, or a sense bereft of affection. Oh God, just stop it. We're not going to cry.

It's never that easy really, is it, like some Cameron Crowe flick. I'll leave a tip, cash and some change (who leaves a fucking change tip, really?) and you a full ashtray and a sigh. There's no sex in a square table with uneven nut brown stain veneer and a plus sign shaped base. Everytime I lean for my cup the thing nearly falls over, save some show flyers jammed under one of the corners. Tea over the edge like a levy. No Led Zeppelin playing, no knowing looks. I'm tired, aren't you? Jesus I'm just so fucking tired from all of this.

***

Break time! What rhymes with orange? Relexification. And homonyms.

***

So we leave.

You walk home over damp rocks, long since hardened, sad but no tears, mad but no shouts and sucked into the vacuum created by sealing yourself off over time, over months, the masonry paid for in suspicious veiled comments and disappointed looks and this vacuum, this airless roar is birthing a spectacular feeling that erupts from you, not in a smile or a tear, with no lightning but probably how lesser gods came out of Zeus after a good old fashioned affair, in the sad cognizance of "whatever" with a tinge of regret.

It's just that easy. "Nothing more terrible, nothing more true."

Now we know where the leading questions are going and the solipsism of all that we've bought won't save anyone from a capsized ship and a craft laden with something intangible--an argosy of a color that is defined by blurriness, set to shore.

The feeling you want is there, a burning sound coming from something "real," it's a fantastic current into an enervating signal, only now we can't touch through all of the noise. The world seeps like honey into our cracks and everything is sticky and one color in our memory, and that color is gold,

but that flavor is gone.

***

When I was just a boy I knew everything. I had a game with a musical interlude and tactile feedback and cards inserted into clandestine slots with encyclopedic knowledge of maps and flags. Each button produced new sounds and new games and each question resulted in a personal championship or a battle against other potential champions (but I was always the champion of knowing, because knowing is everything!)Identity!Location!Structure! *Melody*

*Shaking*

Off



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