INSECTS AND ASHES

She stands over the cement ashtray.  Watching the cigarette smolder in the sand.  The smoke wraps around the stub.  A wind tucks the smoke underneath in a steady current.  Some of the ashes even glow red.  Like eyes of an insect struggling to stay alive.  Perception is fanned mockingly and then stifled.  Ashes dry up and disappear as red eyes close permanently.

Did any ashes get on her scrub?  She quickly scans the patterns and pockets.  Nothing.  Measurements of the prudent and the laughable.  Right eye gets a sharp sting from hair that has been blown in by the wind.  Fingernails drag the coerced strands.  Getting long.  Need to make time to get to the salon for a haircut.  Make time.  Make something.  Make conversation.  Make dinner.  Make beds.  Make it better.  Make it the same.  Make it the same.  Make them happy.  Make them laugh.  Measurements of the prudent and the laughable. 

Designing woman designing the same and the turn.  Designing the turn to come right around to end up in the same spot.  According to the design templated over her skin.  Can't shower it off enough.  Warm water.  Warm water getting cold.  According to the design templated over her skin.  Template.  Plates.  Making dinner.  Making the table.  Washing plates.  Big plates at that restaurant.  Date.  Make a date.  What was his name?  Marco?  Demarco?  Demarcate a page.  Speaking in code.  Aggregation and aggravation.  Make it the same.  No straying from the formatting.  Recareer when the code breaks - when the film breaks.  Interface with them.  Interface for others.  For him.  Marco?  Was it?  Maurice?  Mauritz?  Unending patterns designed to go on indefinitely until the red eyes close and the ashes disappear with the wind.  Lines and shapes designed in patterns.  Make it the same.  Little eyes in the small corners of every intersecting line in the indefinite and unending patterns.  Interlocking.  Weaving and knitting together.  Connecting.  Tangling and untangling.  Make it the same.  Unending until the red eyes of those little bugs in the dying life of the ashes.  Patterns.  Make it the same. 

Given up on his name.  Need to change yours.  Once more.  Once more until the next time.  Relationship patterns.  The knots are too small in the tangles of the connections.  Those little lines of code in the patterns.  Little eyes in the corners between the lines.  Where they meet.  Where you meet.  Met.  Make it the same.  Get away.  Would be nice.  About time.  Less energy wasted on annoying things.  It's getting colder.  Get away.  About time.  Time.  Away from them.  Over to the space outside.  Stand alone.  Take it in.  The air.  The smoke.  Look around.  Space.  Air.  Smoke.  Look down.  At the cement ashtray.  Extinguish the pattern.  Dying life remains in those closing red eyes.  Dying in the sand.  With ashes disappearing with the wind.  Current patterns of wind.  Indefinite and unending patterns of wind.  Don't burn anymore holes in the remaining scrubs you have.  Keep them as long as you can.  Make it last.  Make it the same.


- Max Stoltenberg