Caliper

Oh what a glorious shimmering day, a bicycle ride, coffee with friends, a jaunt out to a Thimble Island. My plans
resplendent with mirth. ‘Threw my bike in the hallway, leapt to the apartment, then still shower dripping answered the phone.

I don’t know why, but when I’m dressing, especially in a hurry, I like company. I don’t care what; I’ll turn on some nice music, talk with a roommate across the hall or flip through a magazine. But an hour ago I turned on the TV, and that’s when it punched through the fabric of my day and gashed right through my being.

It’s funny how a body is made. A tree branch, a raccoon, a person all assembled so much like all else, with a frame supporting the gross structural weight along with the integral systems contributing to a whole. But us animate things are so different than, say, buildings. We start as tiny bits which seemingly emerge from within themselves, so that even though a rib is perfectly encased in musculature, one never had to be fit inside the other. So I guess, when you ponder, it’s no great mystery that a lurking thirst could be found inside there as well.

I don’t know why, but someone must have made the decision to broadcast the movie just then. It always leaves me dumb, from the moment I hear the music. I just went and closed the blinds, then the curtains over them, and with the lights off poured drink after drink and sat. I don’t care who wrote or directed this one, so intensely personal the thrust behind it seems. To me it has always been so much more than just a film. It somehow manages to heap my long frozen tears into its glow.

Always I realize it is me. And I think then that my arms could never open wide enough to hold such a woman. When suddenly I remember the truly sad part of it all; no such woman exists. She was a sprite. But that’s OK, ‘cause I’m only a cheap Puck.