These smiles are forced and its surprising they haven’t creased my face like crows feet at the corners of the eyes on an ancient sun-worshipper. You make me feel old and out of touch, as if somewhere during my years I stopped listening and just started believing I was right. I am never right, but I do my best to at least attempt being reasonable. Yet that doesn’t matter, because I’m like the shapeliest girl at a middle school pool party; you’re not about the entirety of me, my knowledge of what you’re expounding upon isn’t important nor is my opinion. My passion is the punchline, the big attraction, and that’s what draws all the attention as well as the eyes-rolls.
I’m quick to temper and burn hotter than the half-inch above the candle where invisible air scorches at flesh like a snake-strike. I sear with words, but the passionless just chuckle and shuffle on their righteous path, complacent with the belief that they are the smartest in the room, each to a person, and thus all of them silently assuming a throne of little power; children atop the short slide of the playground. I laugh at myself and the lot of you – we all laugh because this is quite a grand comedy and somewhere in your eloquent stumble you cross a nugget of truth that levels the playing field and brings all of us back in the game.
Yet you still don’t need more than the fire of the ensuing swirl of hyperbole that blasts out as a reflex. No cortical response slows the chaos, and that’s why it’s such a joy for you. To watch the captive animal hiss and scratch at the glass. And so you keep tapping. It’s all for your enjoyment, your position over the emotions and your scholastic vanguard that equips you for debate with simple air and heat. No substance there, just a bit of bluster and then you roll over it like a tank because why yield when you can just continue rolling? Why arrest your own outpouring of perfectly common sense to make change?
It’s too easy to shun the life experienced because this is what was telegraphed into your reason and the rest isn’t rational or pure; it gets stuck in a filter – trapped -so your crystal opinions carry no dilution. And these long days spent with every sense open to all voices, to all of the smooth and rough skinned interactions accumulated by embracing passion: it matters little.
The stories and phrasings coursing through this tired body are not as impressive as the spray of a deep cut – a crimson spilling gash – that cannot be controlled. Better than carefully withdrawing understanding or simply listening to this heart, you strike, hold your ground and await the sanguine spray so you can remain victor in your tired little battle.