Monday, September 26, 2011

In the night I crept through quiet rooms, stopping to rearrange your strings, wanting to make this game of cats-cradle the easiest to win and lose. My hands are clumsy and my heart worse, and it's not really cheating if you're only stacking the deck a little bit. It's only that I've still just got enough iron under my skin for this one nail, so it would be a shame to let it all go to waste. There are so many things that can be fastened by so little.

The answer lies somewhere in those strings, wrapped around your heart thumping sweetly in your chest. I have every intention of creeping in as often as possible to move them around, to make more room for the winning hand. And if while I'm in there rearranging I happen to expose a tiny golden frog or untold treasures, well, that will just be one more good thing to add to the list.

If I were to come with a set of instructions, they would tell you to look for me in the maps without oceans, where the territory that falls off the edge is the same as what starts over again on the other side. They would point to my own heart and its uneven wobble, to the chambers all full of gold dust and candy. They would tell you to look for me, scattered, sown broadly across the land, becoming strong in the sun and the rain and torn backwards by the wind. Some assembly required, certainly, but perhaps not recommended.