ANTS AND WALLS
Nothing can be said. The ants are gathering for a diplomatic presentation. They hope to open an embassy in one of the four corners of my room. They like me because I am a differently-abled person who stays home a lot, who is willing to feed them. My price is that they have to tell me a story, at least once a week, on a Friday night. They find their stories in all of the apartment buildings in this part of town. Here is last week’s story:
The kind physics professor in the pink dress is presenting himself as a man in a blue suit. Each day, quantum mechanics, M Theory, and back episodes of Battlestar Galactica flood his brain lobes like gasoline in a Plymouth Barracuda… while his mind labors about the social mores of the day, the times in which he lives – he is afraid that he does not understand the ways of his very own country, his own “countrymen,” the people of his country.
He imagines that the bar into which he has walked is full of people, but actually, it is full of people whom he does not understand. Now after work, he wants to be happy, really he does, but how does one go about that? Even though he could just as well have chosen to be x (where x = Unknown) … he finds himself distressed. Emily Dickinson with her wonderful verse, her reclusive habits, and her little-known lifestyle δ (where δ = hidden but happy. Δ and Emily are helping him along the way and still, he cannot cope.
A compassionate, stunning blonde man attempts to take our professor under his wing, but alas the professor is too close to retirement to have his calculus recalculated… or to put it in Emily’s terms, he is too old to be rewritten with any spice, oakwood, or redwood. He wants to be reassured and when no one is looking, the young blonde man does what he must do: he reduces our professor to the size of a yummy, full-flavored picnic and feeds him to the ants in the walls.
Marc Isaac Potter (they/them) is a differently-abled writer living in the SF Bay Area. Marc’s interests include blogging by email and Zen. They have been published in Fiery Scribe Review, Feral A Journal of Poetry and Art, Poetic Sun Poetry, and Provenance Journal. Their Twitter is @marcisaacpotter.
