violence on boulevard montparnasse

every day is a violence.

mornings are of no nutritional value. plates stacked in the sink. knives and soap. old crusts of bread like guilty underwear. delicates to be hand-washed. a half-smoked cigarette by a half-opened window.

one walks in the rain to work.

one works through the wet cement, brushes by the angry, the late, the barely competent. umbrellas rise and fall in a blink of consent: sometimes you take the bottom, and sometimes you take the top. sometimes the metal jabs, and the fabrics rub distractedly, making hasty love like the married. no kisses. one stops, and, one excuses oneself.

one checks at one's watch. one has things to do. one always does it wrong. and always, one murmurs to oneself that if it were not for these things, why, next time it would be all right. and then the hour pools and drips like a dying candle.

but sometimes it does not. sometimes you tap the wet cement and all of a sudden there is an undivided thought.

a pale, unhurried girl passes under the small protection of an umbrella. chance twinkles and ticks your eye, and bombs:

why don't I unzip my fly for you? you yell!

wop? she is reduced: a backpack, and a japanese shock. you sacrifice yourself to free her world. you've flashed her your body, baptized by rain. and she is a white dandelion, suddenly blown out.

to step in a puddle is to mutilate your reflection. to scream is to state the obvious. she is sixteen and you have just ruptured her poetry. what do you do?

how do you do? She cries.

crying is stating the obvious. it rains. you go to your job. and you sit at your desk.

at home the fridge hums like a gas chamber. when you contemplate, you contemplate the obvious. your ash tray is full.

it doesn't help that you've given yourself to the sky, nor that you've made a dandelion fly. again, you are you.

you cut yourself a note. today was your day.