Our Gentle Alchemy

“Your mother raised a gentle flower,” she said.

I know this much is true.

I am a fragile thing.

The world is a rough place,

And the slightest breeze bends my stem to the ground.

.

Existence is a belt-sander.

I disappear as I proceed,

The treadmill eating me from the feet up,

Until I am but a raw nerve, massless as a photon.

Tumbling along, out of control.

.

The regularly scheduled programming

Of TV static across my frontal lobe

Resolves into dreams,

But the ending is always a cliffhanger,

And there’s never a next episode.

.

The world is a rough place.

I can be smooth long enough to get what I need, but

I am quicksand,

Sinking into myself,

Past all the skeletons of the past.

.

I turn over stones in the desert, searching for sustenance, but uncovering only scorpions.

Steinbeck taught me to put Vaseline in my gloves,

And my long-idle, smooth hands are well suited for the task.

I am what I eat.

.

You are quicksilver smooth, the most effortlessly charming entity I have ever encountered.

I trace the trade-routes of your nervous system down your spine,

In awe of the circuitry that manifests the workings of your magnificent philosopher’s mind

Into inscrutable, dazzling action.

I long to be like you.

.

Blessedly, you allow it.

The world is a rough place, but smooths, guided by your patience in the presence of our gentle alchemy.

We stretch each moment into eons,

Our laughter a windbreak in the sandstorm.

I am truly nourished.

.

I wake far from the desert,

Alone in the vast, inky blackness of interstellar space.

My craft a teardrop of smooth mercury,

Racing, faster-than-light, across impossible distances,

But I am not afraid.