from hearing the roar, i’ve become it. what cold, cold solace. to become what you’ve always feared, impervious, detached, even my skin betrays me. another tool, weapon, gift, like muscle and bone, cheap tissue and cardboard, serrated knife and short iron pipe, keyboard and screen. just another thing amongst others. even worse to watch others as a series of machinations, expressions of complex equations, ultimately solvable. all reduced to a matter of time, desire and persistence. even my daughter, my son, clockwork, steady but their course is circumscribed. not to say i get no pleasure from them, or any of it, but this clarity of vision that i had once been able to turn on and off as needed reveals constantly inner workings as ratchets and gears and springs that can be plucked and tuned and reset, just like that. everything as “just like that.”
look at me, same as i never was.