agulla.

Ezra’s chugging,

but the lactose level just won’t decrease.

(what’s our meaning? you decide.)

fourth wall broken,

let’s watch, dear reader

as the gallon challenge becomes the old man & the sea.

(‘s all in the references.)

this milky moby dick will not be caught

& our hero oughtn’t be doomed to fail;

might happen regardless.

so the sorrowed sisyphus rolls on,

not realizing he possesses the power to

invert

convert

subvert

tip the boat & total the car, Icarus!

release the safety belt & try your wings for once, man!

take your way out!

he won’t. can’t. something.

we just sigh & call him Ishmael.

kurek.

destruction breeds destruction

& setting her one-eyed gaze on the physician’s assitant,

Minerva made a mess.

you may have seen the body count in the papers?

but these are desperate, gorgeous times

& zombies walk the earth when the spirit moves.

out of ammo,

she stoppered up her burning lungs, shouldered her shotty,

& embraced the good Mr. Tandy come alive again,

knowing it might well be the last she’d ever bestow upon another form

(read this with romanticism rolling on your mental reel-to-reel, dear reader)

& so they skipped (gore-lumbered) into the sunset,

Minerva clutching her bandolier,

Tandy’s fingers twitching ‘round his guns -

necromancers & abhorsens both,

staring down their humanity.

facing facts never looked so good.

sentim.

Yvaine is collapsing beneath the weight of imploding galaxies.

celestial bodies don’t always dance; sometimes they stumble,

& in the space of those faltered steps, there is a kind of painful silence -

the sort that descends when someone voices a question

& no one knows the answer.

the wrench is gone, or at least, she can’t feel its weight in her palms any longer

& the stars have ceased to consult her before moving on or off their orbital patterns.

a layman’s hands are his welfare,

& so, it seems this month she starves.

(& at the word, Enna cracks a smile)

heavenly bodies may well be the answer to one of these ‘unanswerables’,

but system overload is the main malfunction of this engine;

the diagnostic readout has been screaming it in little red digital rat pellets for days now.

sigh, sigh, sigh.

it never rains but it pours.

aonair.

our words will be simple, our passages to the point.

The Neighborhood believes itself drifted into decay;

in the ‘burbs it goes about its business, quiet & neglected.

but today, we’ll be magnanimous for a moment

& mow the frost-tipped lawns,

giving brief attention the sagging rooftops above our red noses.

The Often Orphan & Sosh are at odds

& poor Charybdis just cowers in the corner,

willing the weedwhackers to a volume greater than the voices.

she’s a little liftoff-challenged these days.

Chimaera gets it

& picks her up in his shiny new somethingorother when the dulcet tones of discord dominate the sound waves at home.

many a night she hops in beside him

& speeds off to recreate that from which she’s fleeing.

& through this problem of nature vs nuture

the mowers drone on.

femtian.

the personal questionnaire is the hardest part of the interview.

she twirls the pen & wracks her brain

the recipe for believability is one part reality, two parts fill-in-the-blank

‘just try to be as honest as you can’

the words echo like an accusation in the hollows they’re trying to probe

easier said than done, guys.

unsolvable riddles are their favorite,

but she houses no hidden truths.

so, incapable of pleasing,

she bangs her wrists together in rhythm

keeping time with the beat of the mysteries’ multiplication rate.

seeing the name they’ve given her scrawled at the top of the page,

she smiles to herself.

aryah.

they’ve got a sense of humor, at least.

undertrykke.

The man with the mirror-fingers emits a low whistle.
“Boy, you really did the number on these babies, huh?”

Unsure whether a response is expected/required, Yvaine - or is it Charybdis? - grunts noncommittally.

“I haven’t seen a sitch like this since ’74.”

The disembodied mouth in his chair doesn’t seem amused.

“So, ah...what’s the story? Unfortunate encounter with a...jackhammer?”

His patient’s garbled gurglings are of the indecipherable variety.

“What was that?”

She spits out the gadgets & wipes the blood from her lips.
“It must’ve been the bullets.”

His eyebrows rocket to his hairline & his eyes slither to the floor.
“...ah.”

She shrugs.
“I bite things.”

erba.

The old man with the camera tries her patience & evades her understanding.
Why does he mark his presence & preserve his time spent here?
More to the point, why so fondly?

She grins derisively to herself.
Once a tour guide, always a cynic.

Skye vacations in parables.

With unseeing eyes, she considers the circular seal which represents her literal past & figurative future.

Casually, The GentleMan In the Suit leans against the railing to her right & reads aloud- he does enjoy brochures.
“Why stay in one place when you could be in four?”
Glance = bullet bra.
“Why stay in one piece when you could be in more?”

A scowl, a flick, a fold, a silence.
Hers, hers, his, theirs.

“You can’t live in four corners, you know.”
‘Terse-yet-offhanded’ is copyrighted & on her resume.

He grins like a jackal.
“You can pick one.”

Her shoulders heave.
“I like lightswitches.”