Hidden Movements

for Sho

Language wants to grow up to be color and color wants to grow up to be sound. When it was a child, politics wanted to grow up to be a firefighter but ended up being fires. When it was a child, fire wanted to be alone in its room away from its terrible father. Everything becomes many of itself as though the world were breaking the mirror of you before trying to put it back together. On the job application not knowing to say if you have a disability. What you have is what a kaleidoscope has when no one looks through it. In you is so much color, it burns to think about. When you were young, you thought you wanted to be older and when thinking was young, it knew it’d never have the answer. If you open the door, you will live a life full of shape and color. If you don’t open the door, you will live a life full of shape and color. You thought you had a choice. Your choice wanted to be the right one. When your choice grew up, it didn’t want to be on fire. It wanted to be the sky. The sky looks down at you and winks its one good eye. 

Character Development

I went to bed sick convinced I’d wake up feeling sicker, but it was just the opposite. When I woke up, I was a better man and the floorboards weren’t creaking. The construction on main street had finished, though I couldn’t tell the difference between my past and its present. When I woke up better, I didn’t need to get better anymore so eventually I became worse. The people I hurt in the past, I hurt again. The lapel pin I wore to work for the cause of the week found its way off my suit jacket. My pleated khakis wrinkled in the bin. In this way, I again incentivized myself to become better. I went back to grammar school and failed every class. I wore glasses thicker than envy. I learned how to spell my own name backwards. I learned that Atlas was a man punished by having to hold up the entire world, and then I learned that a man in power never receives it as punishment. I went to bed as a miracle and woke up as a flower. Bees wanted everything to do with me and so I felt famous until winter came. When my petals fell off, I could see a dead bee in the snow. I wondered if I was a perennial or something grown from a bulb.  If I was grown from a bulb, I hoped I shone brightly. When I woke up, the morning was long and terrible. Sunshine wanted a word with me, but I wanted more.