BUREAUCRACY NEVER ACCOUNTED FOR THE FENCE SITTERS LIKE US (a poem)
The lobby we’ve been sent to is old and from the pages of a comic book I’ve never read. It is empty in here except for two infinitely long queues of people.
On the left (mine and yours), the sign asks to FALL IN LOVE. These people are loudly violent. They wrestle, fuck and play Jenga. This line believes that there is a winner in the person who can suffer the worst loss.
On the right (yours as well as mine), the placard suggests that we should BE IN A RELATIONSHIP. They all sing on this side. Sailors’ songs. Church camp ditties. All in 4-part harmony. All dead certain of their cheeriness. An acrobat is playing pattycake with a quarterback.
Hand in hand, we choose neither side. We cut down the middle of the thought experiment. You say something I cannot hear properly because now we are in a jungle.
I hang upside down from a branch untouched by moss. While you take a turn on the vines up ahead. Below me, the LOVE line squirms. Under and over each root in their path. They have made an artform out of writhing in shit and mud and treasure hunter’s shame.
In the distance, you are talking shop with a jaguar. A scene backlit by camera flashes. The RELATIONSHIP line is full of tourists. They are dawdling. Seeing the sights like it’s all bought and paid for. Some are polite enough to pass around a rare and deadly spider. Everyone gets the chance to be bitten.
I join you in a quiet sunlit canopy and you hand me a mango. We sink our teeth and dribble sweet juice from our chins to our snow-covered boots. An icy wind whistles and whips through the mountains. You pass me back the binoculars and point out a particular snow bank to the East.
The RELATIONSHIP crowd are roped together now, moving single file and slowly. Their route seems safe enough. But they struggle hard and struggle long. No slips can be afforded. If one goes down, then all must fall – more prey for the shimmering cliff face.
On the other side of the ravine, those in LOVE have made themselves an avalanche. They scream and holler. Thermals are stripped and waved in praise of their violently vomited snowdeath. Disciples of hypothermia – they throw echoes like punches at the mountain’s churning gut.
I wonder about how to follow. How we might keep deserving them. You just return to climbing our own peak. I wait a moment before digging my hand into your former foothold. As the clouds part around us, We startle a flock of pigeons roosting on a billboard.
The evening is clear. The city glows unabashedly. We are ninety storeys up. But neither of us know the building’s name. Or the street it’s on. Or the city it towers over. Below us, there is noise. There is movement. People. There is always people. But from this high, there is no way of telling who will FALL IN LOVE, who will BE IN A RELATIONSHIP. Who walks in between as we did. As we still do.
For the billionth time since our first meeting, we smirk gently at each other. Together, we clutch the ledge. We lean out over the night’s fresh confusion. And we spit chewing gum at people.
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