There’s one straight out of the box we are monads, haunted by communion—George Steiner
I
Stalled. I have been here before—the door jars, jacks brittle against the frame, the latch tacky with shed life; and then, before was indistinct, of no moment, the same squared-off address of flashings and vitreous bowl, an unfocussed grey of tiles and melamine strict about the flush, cyclopic control and confessional; so much slips my mind. I dangle myself absently over the flow, hear the shuffle and held breath behind the partition, and try to feel elsewhere. There, cramped in the grouting, the small hand of diminished hope: I was here.
II
Up above my head there’s music in the air, emoting and riffs ecstatic, a levity of unsensing. You may not inquire of this; flush-mounted in the cavity, it gasses sweetly as a smoked hive, while the pressure drops and all amity is let go for the stacked groove, glottal coagulate, a geist-heist tendering: desire becomes us. Wave at the sensor. So much passes for protest, begs the question: wherefore fullness, and thanks— where is the love? We long to rest, loosely shackled in our downed pants.
III
It’s reassuring to suppose that beyond this is another much the same, that what we have and give in common is a faced and floating panelling—axiom of our lately closed circuit, it will trump neighbourliness, the open, cupped palm, dam us in a right to do: we jump at the latch fumble, I’m in here! i.e. piss off! Ach, we do not make up the world, truly—your suspended enclosure is not the henceforth longed for! Sit still: feet at the door, the knock, and you’re caught in the one-two altogether!
IV
Once open, the door is beside the point, the point being—say it!—reconciliation, yes, now there’s one straight out of the box, a notion worth a line or two on grouting, say, or the Kelburn church wall— God does not live in boxes—amen to that brother, and as for us, all our constructs might flat-pack it off, we lose our thrones as the sky grows tall, forsake the cubicle for an opened upper room. And there’s grace: not to be going out or coming in but set in the threshold, your solar plexus rise and fall in step with all who are undone.
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