random

***
novel

"isn't the beach grand?" she asks in that shy tone which suggests she would have said nothing if it really weren't beautiful. i am consistently overwhelmed by her piousness towards the ordinary. it almost suggests that if the sun were at the very right angle to make sparkles on the water or if the snow drifted exactly to form a wave crest against the edge of a wall, everything in her world would remain ok. i wish i had her sense of awe. instead, i find myself playing cynic to all that's around me. earlier in the afternoon a shop clerk discounted my usual chocolate bar from 56 pence to only 50 so i could pay with only one coin. rather than think of paying the good deed forward, i retrenched into my usual sarcastic recesses to think this was just a cheap marketing ploy to keep me coming back now that there's a rival shop across the street. alas, i search for something wholesome and yet do so with shattered lenses.

i don't remember how i met her, but i know now that she's become part charge and part guardian in this wayward existence i lead.

***
yahweh

the long fingers extend forward pushing from the wrist in what is clearly an intentional gesture outward,
the palm is flat and the the curve of the fingers upward seem to clasp around an invisible sphere of something-
perhaps energy, perhaps light or maybe just a child's red ball retrieved after too much raucous playing.
the gesture suggests mercy, suggests healing and yet, at its biological core, is just muscles and tendons,
tightening and loosening.
"come to me" becomes "alms" and vice versa, asking and giving in the very same motion...

the long fingers extend outward pushing from the wrist in what is clearly an act of force and determination,
the palm is flat but the fingers rise upward to seem like impregnable mountains on the side of a deserted valley,
it is easy to see this is anger and humiliation and contempt in the simple connection of bones and muscles moving,
"why?" is all it asks and i must say i agree

so many portraits of the same gesture and yet no resolution to his opposition

. . .