THE PERCH

They met at a place between now, then, and when.

Through my weighted mon­o­cles, from my perch on high, I see them both syn­chro­nize their watches and their gaze.

Should I yell down and tell them it’s all a waste of time?

Who wants to be “that guy”!?

I don’t and I have more impor­tant things to do. Like try to fig­ure out how to get the fuck down off this thing.

A year and a half marched through them and still I watch tee­ter­ing on exhaus­tion. I watch their inte­rior com­fort, their con­sump­tion of osmo­sis, and the con­se­quent sta­tic. The arch greets me at the cen­ter, the high­lighted cli­max of begin­ning and end spits me square in the face. Moose ears, even. And I begin to antic­i­pate the free fall of the other shoe dropping.

She must have set her watch a sec­ond too late and he a sec­ond two soon. Their feet dan­gle in the air as they can no longer rely on their abil­ity to con­trol time or their sheer faith of the known nar­ra­tive. No longer able to tell them­selves the future.

I’m about to fall asleep because watch­ing this sit­u­a­tion isn’t par­tic­u­larly excit­ing. It’s actu­ally pretty bor­ing and I’m pissed because now it’s too far away from me.

I can fin­ish the story.

Sta­tic inter­rupts.

He can’t hold it in his hand and she doesn’t point a finger.