The Divine Farce (LeapLit)

by Michael S.A. Graziano

His fears seemed to be an expression of conservatism. He was afraid of losing the familiar.

I felt sad it was over, as if our triangulated love was a thing with a soul, and now it was dead, and only the valueless components were left, hopelessly scattered.

Why did I want to leave a world of minimalist perfection, to explore something unknown?

Is it enough to struggle in an endless cycle for the simple biological truths of food, water, sex, and sleep? I tried. I tried to be content. I tried not to feel nauseous about the failures of other people, to draw my satisfaction from the strength of my own muscles and bones. Success is selfish.

We were so driven by hunger and thirst, and so isolated from each other by the constant mixing of the crowd, and so numbed by the repetition of caverns and food troughs and rusty water pipes and perpetual battle, and so gratified at each orgiastic meal, that we had lost all our capacity for imagination. For vision.

And I could remember especially the look on Henry’s face when the crowd separated us. It was the last I ever saw of him, that agony as if, at the moment the crowd had pulled us apart, the strands connecting my heart to his had physically ripped out his insides.

Ten thousand other people are probably better suited to me and deserve the luxury above the muck, but it doesn’t matter. My friends have precedence.

To have a purpose is in itself an arrival.