A Story About Sanity

We take our hair for granted, that keeps us warm and makes us feel pretty or masculine. We take our warmth for granted, that keeps us alive and flexible. When we start our day we count instead the aches in our bones and the annoyances that flow through our mind.

I have this idea in my head. I must be consistent. I must only present one point of view at a time. I must type quickly, expelling the ideas in my head as movement in my fingers to signals on a keyboard to words on a screen. Because when I, we move slowly, I, we allow the more sullen thoughts to slip their simpering, sly, silent sounds between our muscle and skin.

When we exist, we exist the same as all the other damn animals, thinking mostly/only of ourselves. When we don’t exist, we too dissolve into thoughts and infect the atmosphere and the ground. We are breathed into our neighbors’ noses, filtered through their lungs, exhaled like second nature. We are stomped into the roots of trees we walked by in the morning.

I am miniscule. I am thick. I exist only in comparison, a simile not a metaphor. I am not an aphid, tiny, green. I am not a moth, fuzzy, seeking light. I am not an island, alone, ideal, nurturing. I am a person. More this than you, less that than you, equal in those other things. I am a warmth made of skin, muscle, bone, thought, hair.

Slow down.