etiquette

How soft seems the fever when it finds you, overwrought and full of murdered angels. How kind seems the cold that tries to break your bones, shaking you from your life on out. These ripples that enclose us, these tiny fires and brittle lights that abound despite the empty. These echoes of imperfect solutions that fill and and flow through all the holes that make up the soul. How hard the fist, how sweet the tooth, how divine the writhing. As goes the beast, so goes the ghost.

Head split like kindling, thought as splinters in the spirit, I worry away at the seams. Every third stitch or so such a leap as to make faith seem steady, such a patchwork of failings and regrets. The ministrations of keepers of secrets and keepers of scores, the confusion of every wearing of the earth with a path until the dry-river becomes the road and we all seem to be walking on water. When a species of generalists become troops of monotone specialists, I fear for every step we take. Everywhere you go, there is a throne of bones for comfort. Clean hands have muddied every heart left beating.

You unfold the napkin as you begin another long lunch, your lap laden in freshly laundered cloth, a trap prepared for stray crumbs. You work the cutlery with delicacy and grace, each wrist full of elegant strength, each hand wise in these gustatory skills. You speak with knowledge of custom and manner, you listen with intent and wit. Every prayer you breathe is heard and answered. Where ever you dine, whatever the fare, you are grand and meticulous: civilized consumption's own poster-child. Another soldier set upon an enemy so guileless that it doesn't know it is at war. Another beautiful flawless victory for the abyss.