Robot Love

There are three things that robots cannot do,” wrote Maxon. Then beneath that on the page he wrote three dots, indented. Beside the first dot he wrote “Show preference without reason (LOVE)” and then “Doubt rational decisions (REGRET)” and finally “Trust data from a previously unreliable source (FORGIVE).”

Love, regret, forgive. He underscored each word with three dark lines and tapped his pen on each eyebrow three times. He hadn’t noticed that his mouth was sagging open. He was not quite thirty, the youngest astronaut at NASA by a mile.

I do what robots can’t do, he thought. But why do I do these things?

 -from Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer

i dream in color

chains.  a row of chains.  long, heavy, rusted.  hanging from an open concrete vault, only the vault is turned on its side and we are in it, we are pouring out.  slanted light is pouring in.  we are jumping and i am taking pictures.  so many pictures!  the colors are all so rich, so vibrant, so incredibly vivid.  each shot is richer than the last.  these dessert colors, the red rusts streaked across the canyon.  wait, the canyon?  so many layers of brown on brown.

peek beyond the vault, crawl to its edges and see the world drop away.  mountains inverted.  deep deep gully.  deep rich belly.  and still the chains are calling.  clink, clink.  clinkclink.  clink.  i snap another photo but your curls are in the way.  so many curls!  jessica of the blue eyes and the always in the way.

we laugh.  we jump.  we take more

pictures

imprint of a kiwi

i was walking with you last night by a river.  you were walking with yourself, your little girl self.  she picked up a bike and you got on the back as she pedaled out into the current.

i hesitated on the shore.

i didn't have a bike, and i was afraid my dress would weigh me down.  ultimately i didn't want to lose you to the other side so i jumped in after you.  i kept my head above the surface the whole time.

we pulled ourselves up out of the water.  we dried ourselves stepping through the sun.  we curled up in a cabin where you and little you were overflowing with laughter.  it reminded me of the first time i saw her peeking out.  you were telling a story about sun salutes and the way you interacted with the Afghan observer.  your mischievousness pulled me in.

i was in your happy place and it became my happy place.  light and airy and spacious.

and then i checked my phone.

the voicemail began pulling me back to the other shore.  as i stood to leave i noticed my dress had dried quickly from the heat.  something wasn't right.  the front was stained from the dirty reeds in the river and i felt a sadness for ruining it.

the reeds made a pattern that became a sort of intention.  a perfect outline of bulbs and branch.  a block print all along the front of me. i joked that i should swim the backstroke to complete the pattern.  i soaked up your smile.

and then i woke.  aching for the river, the dress: the message from the pattern

what then?

if not this, then what?

do you think it's worth it.  just look me in the eyes and tell me you think it's worth it: to kick someone out on the street so they can get kidnapped.

i try not to sigh.  her need is so great and the question is impossible to answer because it is. . .a pretzel question.  the kind that loop you around and around until you can't remember where you started.

i want, suddenly, to hold her hand.  to just sit there with that small touch.  is her hand impossibly warm?  is it clammy and cold?  or tepid?  limp?  fierce?  bony?

still the words and the tears spill on.  still the people move around us.  still my throat closes around all the other questions spinning in my head:

if not this, what then?

a place for all the stars

he said his english name was Bench because benches are useful.

we giggled and said it was a good name.  and it was a good name because it fit somehow.  

i want to be useful.  i want to name things the way Bench could name things.  i want to have room for all the drops in my bucket, to not have to overflow in your car or in my kitchen or in the shower with the lights turned low low low.  

hips and bones.  

the back and the forth.  

the way my hands open like a book while you talk.  i'm collecting your stories

i'm sending them back up up up to the place 

where they belong

i think i can

how do they do it? the bees

with their perfectly patched honeycombs. a shape
in nature [repeating]  itself

i am the bee

surrounded by fabric and words, fabric and words.  fabric.
and words.

watching the tunnel of my life


take shape

i punched a wall and she bought me ice cream

the world is full of mixed messages.

in Nebraska, stop lights are horizontal and dough is baked around the meat of a Runza.  

i drove my friend's car there once while he elevated a leg full of staples.  Spicoli's dad called him my Samoan.  hey mel, where's your Samoan?  he's knocked out on pain killers.  or he's picking at his staples. but where'd you find him?  in a phone book in 7th grade.  i like him, that big 'ol Samoan.  

that's what we did back then.  we worked in gas stations and warehouses and got in our car after work to drive 7 hours for a boy we couldn't get enough of.  we learned that manual transmission could still have cruise control and that a friend wouldn't bail on you just because they tore the shit out of their leg in a work accident (even though you told them they should bail on you).  we played frisbee and sang in the sisters room and fell asleep watching Army of Darkness.

but back to the wall and the fist.  back to the ice cream and my scrunched up nose.  back to his story about putting his drugged out brother in a choke hold.  

i think

if i didn't have the Samoan and the boyfriend's dad and the trash cans that lift their lid like magic, 

i might not know who i could become