Where I come from, they don't ask if you're okay.

They tear you out of your chair at dinnertime and drag you around to back and shoot you.

Huh, they don't even bother to clean up after themselves.

You'd think those damn Brits would know what a napkin was.

We are your limelight, we are your children, and we are your harshest critics.

but we are not your playthings.

Draw in those tassels with which we could pull the layer of oil from your voice. Do, dear. They're only a hazard to you now. You're not fooling us anymore. Endearing though you once were, it was a mistake to show us everything.

You never tell someone everything.

Pray though, do tell what you were planning. Before we wrecked our ship, that is. Ah, refrain. It is only we who serve you with our words sublime. 'Tis and endless cesspool that we indeed create, from which you pull your inspiration. It is only us for you who bite the finishing thread in the tapestry. Forgive us, we'd forgotten. How quick you were to remind us of this one way street. Oh that was a marvelous crash.


You'd do well to remember we can scratch to scar but choose instead to wipe your eyes. We know your hands are too callused to do such intricate work. See still how we remain? You have kicked and beaten us in turn but stationary we sit. The only difference is in our eyes.

One may find a sharper vision is upon their person after watching you for so long. They will eventually become yours when your own have dried out. That'll be the third pair...such carelessness.

Perhaps that was intended? Your aim, love? That we think you such a scoundrel that we should leave you here to rot, alone?

After all, it is alone the best you breathe out your fire onto all things. It's where we are created. The most splendid tendrils of a grin rise up from your mouth with each fistful of a world you have made. It's in a mountain of ash you find yourself the next morning. Still they love you.

It is now that you have left us with our eyes, such an opportune time, and with all the knowing that none have possessed before us. It is the very same steel in our backs that has allowed us this knowing that burdens and bars us from spreading it to every corner of this planet.

But do you think that means we ourselves will ever again risk missing the show?

I would die for every last one of you standing...and sitting, before me.

No, of course it's not because I think you'd do the same for me, that's awful.

How selfish.

You honestly think I would ask you to save me? Me, when the cost is at the expense of your own dears that need protecting? There's not a single soul here ready to give that up.

I can tell from your eyes.

But see, I don't have to worry. I can afford to die in each of your places. I only have you guys to lose.

And I needn't think of what would happen to you if I were to go away. You would take care of each other, break and heal as one.

So when the time comes that you should truly need me, I'll be more than willing.

But until then, humor me and piss off.

The string holding the curtains together has no sense of the tautness it once knew.
It's frayed and rather slack now. The neighborhood children like to peep in.
There's nothing a much interest in here, but still they linger. I think they see the gray clinging to everything and wonder where it came from.

Yet, it's in uncertainty that I see their faces form the surest of creases. They know what they saw.

An electric current runs through this building and arches its spine. The air it breathes shimmers and it's mouth rips apart to utter what it has seen.

When they grow to meet my age and shake its hand, they'll remember.

But not now. No. Now they will wake amidst clean cotton and shake the sleep from their heads. They will rise when they day bids they do so, and they will go, and they will-