Читать книгу Dialogues with Rising Tides - Kelli Russell Agodon - Страница 10

The essential idea is this—the man you love is connected to you

no matter what, but he’s also connected to the woman

down the street with the small dog that barks at the lilacs,

and she’s connected to the cashier at the market who’s a bit rough

with your grapes, but he thinks you’re ten years younger than you are

and he gives you free saltwater taffy while calling you

darling—but he also calls her darling, and her dog

darling, and the man you love along with the grapes.

The essential idea is this—all objects are composed of vibrating anxieties

—everyone wants a window or aisle seat and no one wants to sit

in the middle. Call it deniability. Call it the flashlight you keep

by the door never works in emergencies. We are all connected

by the blast that brought us here, the big bang,

the slam dunk, the heavy petting. We can’t always be pretty.

We can’t always be the eyelash and the wink, sometimes

we have to be the ear, sometimes the mouth. You are

and are not the speaker in this story—you are the bridge connected

to the land connected to the man you love and the woman you dislike

who teaches spin class. It’s not personal. It’s not personal

when the universe says it’s complicated and you have ten minutes

to understand quantum physics. When the man you love says

there’s a new connection called supersymmetry and it exists

between two fundamentally different types of particles called bosons

and fermions, you hear bosoms and females. You hear he’s thinking

about the spin teacher with the nice breasts and burrow deeper.

The essential idea is this—someone will always bruise your grapes

and someone will end up in the middle. Someone you love will break

your favorite coffee mug and bring you lilacs. And you will be

connected to people who make your eyes roll. You’ll be connected

to others who stand on the bridge and consider jumping off. You’ll try

to care for them. And you will not look your age, but you will

feel sad when you look in the mirror because we all want to live

a little longer, because the dog will die and the cashier has lost his job

for stealing saltwater taffy from the bin, but he still calls you

darling, calls everyone darling, and today,

darling, darling, darling, the flashlight works.