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Hello Out There

The Coast Guard is made of meat and potatoes taken from the land and laid upon the sea. The sky on water at night bows its head shaking the stars loose from its hair. Don't stare. You'll lose it if you stare, listening to a fleet of ships moving away from you in the darkness, splashing off somewhere to help someone. Small close-in lapping sounds leave you blind with love and dumb with being alive. Each of us are water soluble as soon as the skin stops fighting against it. Each bubble snapping at the surface far above. Pop help. Pop me. Even the small pulse in our arms is enough to move the water and thereby make the whole sky shake. Watch it shake. And then walk away to find another thing shaking. 

 

You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here

Everybody has to make it into the office. Everybody has to stay alive. Which is the dumbest instinct. A sunflower will turn to face the sun. A field of sunflowers revolve in unison. Light weighs more than a mountain if you get enough of it. Oh! I forgot to tell you about what Jill did to stay alive in the office. There was this vulture poster above her desk. Each evening she'd spin it into a tube and take it home with her. Each 8 a.m. she'd unfurl it, a little more creased, a little more torn, above her coffee mug with the cat holding the end of a rope. The pins just going wherever. At night, when everyone's gone, the dark looks like a scatter of tiny bullet holes above her desk in the shape of a heart.

 

image: Amanda Goldblatt


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