some days we are merely meant to be useful, she said. immobility showed me a broken butterfly (or was it a moth?) green details on a mediterranean house, and gutter pot pourri. it has tied me to a chair more than once, but i wriggled loose.
visitors from different countries -- countries that are not our own -- share similar eyes when they see a foreign human in his or her natural habitat for the first time. they see quirks, hairs out of place, hinges and knobs in need of replacement, who talks and who listens. to be observed as a local can be as thrilling or disturbing as the observation of foreign locals. all gestures and slang tossed into table talk fall more slowly from the lips, followed by befuddled explanations.
quick and the dead
fishes and loaves
apothecary, your poison is quick
love is a tortuous road -- torturously tortuous
she felt a quickening.
a stretched reflection on the meaning of available words. then there are idioms, expressions, metaphors, movie quotes -- biblical references formerly attributed to bruce willis movies or shakespeare -- salting common exchanges and turning a newly-englished brain upside down, the sound of it washing over pink wrinkles, mapless, unsure which end is sharp and which end is threaded. eventually the sounds weave a discernible tapestry, a stencil for navigating slurred speech and double contractions: like wouldn't've.
