radical poly

Along the highway today, dolls and loaves of bread, busted at the poly seams, and the wandering gypsies will pick up the rest. Most are busted up beyond repair, props for horror flicks and flea market lamps, no doubt, but some are merely scratched and scraped and road-burned. Some traveling grocer/carny dropped a sack of goods hitting a pothole.

How did you survive?

I’m sorry?

I believe we all have some strength, some gift that helps us through. Survival is no accident.

A year before I joined the department, my parents went on a call. A teenager who went through God knows what. He survived through no choice of his own. We survive whether we like it or not. Through no strength or talent or choice of our own. When he finally had a say in the matter he shot himself in the head. Survival can be a weakness as well as a strength.

Radical polymerization

But I never said the above. A weakness. I never had a bit of fear running into a burning building or wandering the alleyways at night or racing high through the hills, but open contradiction would force me to my knees.

My fantasies involved typical scenes of explosion from violence, striking out and balancing on the precipice of punishment or mercy, but I could never finish those dreams, not having the proper point of reference, not understanding the high that kind of power might rush through my stream, not enough experience controlling life, like nestlings held hostage at the end of a sharp stick. The daydream always gave way to confusion, and then a call to dinner, or bedtime or shoveling snow, or finally the call of my name across a streamered dais that ended in a horizon not nearly long enough to walk from end to end in forgetfulness. Survival can be a weakness, too.