Construct

Sitting.
Shoulders slumped over a low table.
Shoes untied,
feeling socks that fell around my toes
with the walk to this firm bench.
Un-ergonomic.
With a mug too warm to sit over

and clasp my hands around it's circumference.
No streams of light from the windows,
only spots of orange from the lights above.
Highlighting the uninspired:
A seam of grout in the floor tiles,
a left-of-center factory defect of my table,
the tip of my frayed right shoelace,
a crumbling brown leaf that followed me in,

and gleaming,
for a moment,
off a hairless man's neck.
He rubs away an ache,

unaware,
he steps from the touch of the light
and no longer shines orange.

Listening.

Faint, pitching notes come from invisible speakers

and take the foreground.
But only on a rhythmic, seldom occasion.
Beneath is a low rumble of chatter.
I hear one voice emerge
saying commandingly, "dump it".

Immediately another says lightly, "differently."
As if impatiently snuck into the following slot,
like someone slyly cutting in a long line of sleepwalkers.
Followed by an odd, unintelligible length of deep white noise.
I sip from my cooling mug
and imagine the minds of whom the comments were directed.

They merge into one listener.
I see the faceless listener finding a way to follow orders.

With a soft ease, they hold a ceramic pitcher of unknown liquid.
Put their fingers in the pitcher
and draw their hand up from its base

with a reversed, sprinkling-of-salt motion.
Concentrating hard upon the idea of "dump it, differently",

they're able to keep the pitcher upright,
and the liquid follows their fingertips

upward in a helix,
like crystles on a string hung from each fingertip.
Obeying - the liquid falls to the ground

as their lax wrist passes the pitcher's lip.


I smile at this thought,
and blow softly,
taking my second sip.




Jordan R Shaver 10.20.2011