The man watched people go by. He thought they were like ants, so busy and productive all the time. The man had a gentle intensity about him. He was at work. He did a lot of work. A crazy insane amount of work. But there was little praise and the only reward was more work for his good work. His heart was thudding in his chest, not the dull thuds of a calm mind and body, but of one that was throbbing and thrumming with life. He was an electric guitar crashing through the stage.
An electric guitar floating in space.
His heart was about to beat out of his chest and not in a good way. He was dead on his feet, only managing to survive throughout his shift on some small cans of energy drinks. When he downed the energy drinks that tasted of honey, he liked to imagine that he was drinking druid juice. Juice as in potions made by the druids. Not druid fluids. Because that would be gross. But maybe for the right druid, he could potentially swap some DNA with them or something, you know?
Anyways, today was a strange day. Because the customers that came in were more self aware than usual. When he looked into their eyes, it seemed as if they were really seeing him. He felt uncomfortable and a slight shiver ran through his body. His skin felt like there were ants crawling on him. Ants in his pants.
He pursed his lips and tried to maintain a straight face. A man shouldn’t act like this. How can he possibly feel such unease and irritation at some workplace social interactions feeling out of place? He pretended he was a shopkeeper selling some cool wares like various magic items and weapons instead of the modern day stuff that he actually was ringing up. That made him feel a little bit better. Just a smidgen.
Liar, liar pants on fire, an ant crawling on the tiled floor said. What the fuck is wrong with playing pretend in this boring, monotonous world? He demanded an answer from the ant. But when he regained his focus on the task at hand, he found the customer looking at him with a smug grin. Why are they looking like they want to fight him? The man felt his face solidifying, any trace of his soft demeanor gone in seconds.
If it was a fight they wanted, then he had no choice, but to get ready for any verbal assault that was coming his way. He squared up his shoulders and straightened his spine. He was like a circle stretching itself out to be a square. The idea of a confrontation had him stressed, but also excited on some primal level. He was an anteater, fiercely stretching his limbs out in a display of dominance with some vicious predators.
But somehow he was favored by lady luck. His manager told him to finish up the transaction and then go clean up around the store. He inwardly sighed with relief. He didn’t like feeling angry and out of control. His old self would have imagined ripping into the snide customer via a terrible curse through magic or an argument. He felt out of breath as he moved aside for a coworker to take over for him at the register. The air releasing from him slowly like a pricked balloon. He felt a little bit like a sad clown at a circus. Honk.
A smidgen of hope welled deep inside his eyes. He was a little like a pigeon. A smidgen of pigeon. People had abandoned him when he most needed them. Pigeons used to be pets and they were loved by people once. Now, many viewed them as vermin, pests who ate scraps from humans. Which was quite unfair to them.
Why give any love to the creatures if their affection was so easily lost? Pigeons were charming and weird and there was even a conspiracy theory about pigeons being government spies which he didn’t necessarily believe in, but it would be funny if that was actually true.
People were so beautifully cruel and he was a huge romantic at heart. He was a gentle giant and that was quite obvious in his every small action. As he cleaned shelves, he carefully shooed various little spiders away. He thought spiders were cool. They were small, but could be deadly.
There was something charming about things that were small, yet violent. His brain was feeling like it was on fire and it felt like smoke was coming out of his ears. His whole face was turning red. He was feeling a little shy. He started to feel like he wanted to get a shovel and dig a hole for himself to curl up in. For a big body, it felt like his heart was a small flame in the wind.
There is no crime in being small. The woman told him. He wanted to put her in his pocket. Well, he guessed she already was in his pocket because she was on his phone. Her encouraging messages waited for him after work. She was a small twittering bird perched on a tree branch.
She was small, but believed herself to be a giant. Her soul was huge and was starting to take up space in his mind. He felt scared because his brain felt like a poorly built PC (Personal Computer). She would leave him once she knew about his RAM (Random-Access Memory) and his SSD (Solid-State Drive) problems.
He tried to remember a time when he felt okay. It was a little difficult, but he was trying, you know? I know. I understand. The spider that was hanging by a thread said. He felt like shedding a tear. How did this woman know all about all the things he held dear? He was an ice cream cone on a summer’s day. The swirly one, not the scooped one. He was melting all over her hand and she was lapping him up. Like she was one of his cats cleaning themselves. She was a busy bee flitting about, stuck on his sweetness.
He felt like he caught that “You are an idiot” virus. The one that is referenced in popular culture. The one that flashes black and white with the matter-of-fact smiley faces. How awfully stupid everything and everyone was.
He was feeling so tired and overwhelmed. It felt like he was still trying to get over a cold. He could use a warm shower on a day like this. Speaking of showers, a couple of streets down, a dog lifted its hind leg and let loose a warm golden shower on some moss green grass. The woman’s playful words were like this. Intelligent yet dumb at the same time.
The man felt so silly and alive. He swallowed some saliva and nearly choked on his own spit reading a joke she sent him. His throat was feeling a little itchy. He rolled his eyes in a perfect circular motion and grinned like a cartoon character. He was effortlessly beautiful like that.
At his place of work, people admired the man from afar and quietly swooned watching him work. He was aware of some of their gazes, but was mostly oblivious to his own charm. He was a tempestuous storm and the woman was a storm chaser. Tempting and dangerous and a force of nature. She liked being in the middle of his storm.
And in the middle of the storm, there was a moment of silence in the middle of the chaos. Chaos and order coexisted in the creative space between them. He wanted to hold her, but she was many, many kilometers away so he settled for cradling his phone and her words in his pocket. Being with her was like a jolt of electricity to the brain. He was an electronics cable being plugged into a socket. The woman’s words electrified him and sometimes shocked him to his very core.
At his core, he was a little prince keeping his earnest lavender love in a glass case alive. The glass case was a delicate shield to hold the flower of his heart upright and standing. Sometimes, the flower was wilting and at other times, that flower was a vivid lavender blue. Blue and true, was the man to himself and others.
Sometimes, this thing between the man and the woman felt all-consuming. Like it threatened to eat him up. The man so badly wanted to smoke some lavender. And somewhere in the distance, the woman imagined she was eating flowers. Like a fucking goat or something.
The ants continued their steady march. The bees buzzed. And the spiders held on for dear life. They could see two humans buggin’ for some lovin’. The bugs laughed with one another and said, love is something smart and stupid that people choose to do.
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