The nervous man sat.
Finding no purchase on the perch below him,
The perch found no purchase on him.
Perfect friction.
The boy sat.
Across from the man,
Unworried, perfectly.
"Why to you stir?"
The man never stopped.
Looking over with dignified ambivalence, he shrugged.
"Why do you not stir?"
"What can possibly keep you still?"
"Who are you?"
"How do you ask such things?"
The boy looked back upon his own chair.
A rickety rocker, pendulous and ill-constructed.
The miracle of stillness entirely not lost upon him.
"I do not move for random."
The man began to laugh.
His breath blew tendrils of hot steam,
Plumes of pulling and raspy loss.
Slowly his own inexorable motion contained the spill.
"Tell me, boy.
Is this random?"
The man stopped.
As his motion ceased,
A grounding appeared. The boy had not seen.
Chains. Ropes. Hooks.
Knives.
These thrust upon the man.
Sutures in and on his unseen wounds.
Not there to heal, just to be.
Just to exist and testify for the boy.
"Do you see now?"
The boy looked upon the man.
Encased in pain and steel and loss and content.
Ready to go.
"I see now."
Thinking of way to fix its precarious being,
The boy began to rock in his chair.
