“Do you know what it’s like to have a brain like this?” she screamed, stood up suddenly. Shins hard against the coffee table, destabilizing drinks, dirty dishes, bills, receipts, and an electric nest of bobby pins. “Thinking? Always thinking, with the knowledge that there is no clear intelligence at work? This brain can’t build bridges, infrastructure. it doesn’t grasp engineering, can’t calculate the parabolic arc of a rocket, do its own taxes, teach a roomful of students, lead a meeting. It can’t even take orders from a four-top, navigate a POS screen, convince someone to buy a smartphone, hammer a nail, provide funeral arrangements, draw blood, or keep track of a patient’s chart. It can’t look after another person’s child, pet, incapable of driving a bus, conducing a subway train without wondering why the pillars and lights present the way they do, in these one-two-three-four iterations that might resemble some sort of Morse Code, only this brain would know it. It just notices things. Everything. Traffic patterns, the casual relationship between someone’s face and the way their hand holds a drink, lipstick on a filter, ice cubes in a glass, whether the wind is blowing the clouds in a certain way, and all I have to show for it are these words, poetry nobody notices, existence that pertains to nothing, is nothing, do you know what it’s like to notice a caterpillar on a leaf, on a tree, and have it mean nothing?”

I sat in a chair, legs crossed. Drink in hand. Filter burning. Didn’t answer. To agree, or identify, would be to diminish, I thought. To limit, make it less special, I expected. I could have changed her life with a simple nod. But I sat, instead, in a chair, while everything about her went heavy.

Watched her breathe.

So I took a drag, had drink. Kissed her with my mind, my brain, that brain like this, thought about all the ways we could help each other, and did nothing. All the while wishing I could ask her if she knew what it was like to notice lipstick on a filter, ice cubs in a drink, caterpillar on a leaf, just once, on a tree, and have it mean every last fucking thing.

###

in print:

Amazon.com

or for fucking free in digital

Smashwords.com

so long and thanks for all the pish.