He is inherently masculine, the perfect embodiment of male.  It forms in solid layers, the singular embodiment of this entity that possesses a form of acknowledged life, perhaps even a soul burning somewhere inside.  He brings together two disparate chromosomes to form a potent mixture that falls into proscribed roles already predetermined possibly hundreds of years ago, and then throws it out so it sticks to another.  It isn’t personal.  He is not me nor you.  He is outside of that circle. 

She says He, and he stiffens, swiveling his head to pinpoint the particular specimen she’s referring to.  Sounds rise up his chest, to his throat, before he clamps his teeth in front, trapping them, afraid of whether they’ll burst out as antagonistic or pitiful whimpering, neither one welcomed.  He watches the other male, tracking him step by step, measuring, evaluating, comparing.  What about the other man catches her eye?  And does he, himself, possess those qualities?  He still can’t figure out why she chose him, out of every possessor of the Y chromosome alive in this world.  Maybe, at the moment of meeting, he was the only fitting option, and, as she steps out further into the world, more options, better fitting options, will coalesce before her, drawing her away from him.  And he can’t bear that possibility.  She is his.  Even if everyone she meets falls at her feet, and why wouldn’t they, he is the only one whose fingers twine with hers, whose nose nuzzles the soft hairs at her temple, who knows the imprint of her body against his.  She says He, and he wraps his arm around her waist, whispering inside jokes to her until she laughs and forgets everyone else in the room.

Got is crass and unrefined, greedy and grasping. It possesses, a casual confident ownership of the situation. Sometimes, it transforms, pulling on new meanings like temporary masks, a cheap disposable replacement good culture demands to be eradicated. First, it pulls on an imperative, an exclamation of outraged surprise, then, it turns and a new facet exposes, insidious, infectious, wrapping grasping tendrils through the soul.

She says Got and the word slides against him like the silk-warm caress of an over-affectionate cat. He is owned by her, so he is in good hands. His heartbeat calms, his stomach unclenches, and his teeth release his beleaguered lower lip. It’s strange that she’s so small next to him she has to tiptoe to kiss him, but as soon as Got falls out from behind her crooked teeth, he feels so safe, so protected, like if he hides behind her, the demons chasing him will skid in their tracks, wheel around terrified. He knows how fierce she is, how undaunted when faced with his trouble-infested past. Perhaps this is what Joan of Arc was like, or a mama bear when a stranger blocks her view of her cubs. She says Got and he curls tight in her embrace, a protected child again.

For is a gift, a transfer from one entity to another. It is also reason, the underlying motivation guiding the past into the future, pushing agendas, the invisible impetus behind innumerable conscious and unconscious choices. For can be blind, petty, evil, but it can also be a gigantic heroism, a miniscule kindness. For results in consequences, but never bears any itself. It never stands alone.

She says For and in her hands is a brightly wrapped gift, ribbons curled, paper tucked and folded precisely just-so. He can tell she’s nervous, as she always is, and he never understands why. Every gift she gifts him, her time, her smiles, her attention, the perfectly-shaped space within the circle of her arms, that funny little bookmark she’d found in some tacky cluttered souvenir shop in the back-alley of a sleepy beach town, everything, everything were his treasures. He says nothing of that, though, just cradles the present gingerly in his hands. It’s not his birthday, or Christmas, no discernible made-up holiday he can think of, and when he asks her the reason, she smiles and says For and it’s every reason and no reason and the perfect reason all rolled up in one.

Each denotes singularity, an intrinsic individuality, an innate personification of oneness. It separates, placing invisible barriers.  At the same time, it highlights the similarities between disparate entities. Each is an identity of the members of a group, a badge of me-ness mixed up with us-ness, and doesn’t really care about the difference.

She taps each objects and names them, “Each”, meticulously sorted according to categories only conceived of in her mind, details only she can see. He is envious of the attention she places on inanimate objects, when he is sitting right in front of her, so he pushes one askew just so she’ll glare at him, so that he’s the focus of that laser-beam concentration. In bed, he asks her what category she’d place him in, and she tells him not to be ridiculous. Hurt, he turns away, until her fingers weave through the short hair at the base of his head, until she whispers words that puff against sensitive skin. You are not an Each, she croons to him, for you are the only and you have no category to be placed within.

Do is all brawn, sometimes paired with brains, oftentimes without.  Do catalyzes change, manipulates the fabric of the current existence and pushes progress forward. Without Do, there can be no done. Even when there seems to be utter stillness, Do still exists, in the beating of a heart and the blink of an eye, the inexorable change of seasons and the ever-changing tide. Do can be intentional. but often the greatest effects and affects come from the unintentional Do, the silly inconsequential Do that changes the world.

She personifies Do, or is it the other way around?  Always on the move, always doing something, her fingers moving, her eyes flicking, always, always.  It exhausts him watching her zoom around like Heisenberg’s particle, momentum and position always in flux. In rare moments, he snags her hand and drags her down flush against his body, half-protesting but with a soft smile, that special smile she created just for him. They lie together breathing the same potent molecular concoction of air, one minute, two, before that faraway look steals over her eyes. It usually isn’t long before her half-protests mature into full-grown protests and she’s pushing away from him. He hides his hurt, his mind knowing she’s not rejecting him, but she’s got other things to do, better, more interesting things to do. He doesn’t want to stop her, wants to see her succeed in her dreams because only when she’s doing what she does, do the sparkle flash in her eyes and the flush in her cheeks glow a dusky healthy rose. But, sometimes, it’s lonely and so he buries himself in his own list of do’s.

The cold metal curved familiarly underneath his fingers and within is life, a molecular mixture that sustains his next breath.  That’s what life is to him now, the next breath, that next moment as his lungs expand and contract.  Life used to be about far-flung epic dreams only limited by his feet and hands and mind.  But, slowly, as each year slithered by almost without notice, life shrunk bit by unnoticeable bit, closer and closer and closer, until one day he woke up with the realization that  his whole world  consisted of himself and his oxygen tank and nothing else.  It made him want to weep, to know that that brash loud young man so many years ago had been reduced by his own damn choices to this pathetic wrinkled crooked mess of an old man.

He shifted on the hard stone bench.  There were two other people waiting underneath the same shelter as him, a young woman and a middle-aged man.   The man stared off straight ahead, his briefcase next to his feet, his red tie slightly crooked, his attention directed somewhere inwards.   The young woman’s body curved around her phone, her bare knees poking out from underneath her black skirt, her eyes flicking left to right, left to right, enthralled by whatever that shining white screen displayed. He wanted to say something, to yell at them to pay attention to the world around them before they lost it, but the words that climbed up out of his throat were choked away around the plastic tubes snaking through his head.  Instead, he coughed, a  wet gurgle of sound. 

This was ridiculous. 

Taking a firm grasp on the tubes in front of his face, he pulled and gasped aloud at the feeling of them slithering out, taking with them the life-giving air.  It’s ok.  A few moments without compared to the lifetime of life he could give to the people around him would be worth it.  Finally, the tubes pulled free and he let go, letting them dangle freely in the night air. 

A clanging started clamouring around them, red lights blinking off to the right.  The train was coming.  He had to hurry or else he’d lose his chance, or else they’d disappear into the bowels of the train, sinking even deeper in their own inner world.  He shuffled first to the young woman.  She looked up at the presence hovering in front of her and smiled, "Hello."

He opened his mouth to speak the words that tumbled over each other to be let out first but her head turned away as the great rush of air swooped by them, "Oh, grandfather, do you need help getting on the train?"  She stood, swung her bag on her shoulder in one easy motion, and slipped one hand underneath his elbow.  "Do you have everything?"  His mind balked.  What?  He blinked down at the steady upward pressure of the woman’s hand underneath his arm, "Oh.  I – "  What was he doing again?  "Yes?"  Barely waiting for the answer, the young woman’s hand pressed him forward, "Hurry grandfather, the train will only stop for a short time."

The middle-aged man appeared at his side, "Here, let me help you."  "Thanks," the young woman replied, and there was another hand holding onto the old man’s other arm.  Together, they led him gently but firmly up the two stairs and through the waiting train doors.  "I – " the old man began, but the middle-aged man had already disappeared to find his own seat.  The young woman smiled again, her smile sweet but distracted, "Have a nice day, grandfather."  She left him planted on the nearest empty seat. 

He turned to look bewildered out the window.  The light of the streetlamps caressed the rounded sweep of metal of his oxygen tank, still sitting in front of the stone bench, the tubes swinging slightly in the breeze.  He gasped, his lungs clamping down in panic.  The rumbling under his feet grew as the train  pulled out of the station.  

No. 

No. 

But interrupts, determined to have its say, determined that its opinion is right even if it’s the opposite in every way.  Its contradictory nature grabs the head of the conversation and swings it round, sinews twisting and tendons cracking.

“But,” she taps her fingers against her chin.  “But,” her lips curve in a smile, the kind that twitches right at the corners, and golden motes of dust float in the dreary dark darkness, sticking to each particle of each pitch-black note.  She’s a magician, her power distilled into the one word that transforms his world, morphing and transforming the weak-willed despair swirling around him into gleaming shards of metal.  The metal fits to him, clamps tightly to his body as armor, and he’s reminded of those cartoon characters he used to watch early Saturday mornings when he was still young enough to believe everything he saw on television.  “But,” and, instead of a self-inflicted villain, he is now a hero ready to face the future.

Anyways leads in front or else it runs behind. It’s derisive, dead-pan, dominating, and dismissive and when you’ve practically had it figured out, it changes course or doubles back. It’s a reminder of a foregone choice. Or a choice of where to go.

"Anyways," she says and he braces himself, because he knows that the conversation can go any way. It’s most likely a way he refuses to contemplate, down the rabbit hole, falling and falling and ending up somewhere that’s a mirror image of everything he understands. "Anyways," and then she’s off, flitting and tripping and switching, flight or fight reflexes tensing his muscles, his mind scrambling to extract a kernel of sense of the tumbling words striking him in pinprick raindrops. An idea forms hazy in his cupped hands, though drips drops slip through his fingers still. He lifts it, carefully, tenderly, to sip, but before his lips can touch, she splashes it away with a throwaway, "Anyways," and shifts topic once again.