The meaning of love
by Kimberly Nichols
[ fiction - january 03 ]
Platinum Eyelash: Hello again.
Starfishmilkshake: I knew you would come.
Platinum Eyelash: You gave me a ball of thread and asked me to run with it.
Starfishmilkshake: I am glad you did.
Platinum eyelash: That is very sweet of you to say. I like the idea that we have started this perpetual conversation. It's like an object rather than a thing that stops and starts.
Starfishmilkshake: It's what I was telling you about.
Platinum Eyelash: Yes, you're right.
Starfishmilkshake: A conversation piece. You add, subtract, conjugate, contemplate, obfuscate, and hand over to the other for examination, analysis, re-fabrication, and re-transmittal.
Platinum Eyelash: Meld, wield, forge, manipulate, comprehend, consider, decipher, loll within, ping-pong, dissect, disintegrate, and renew.
Starfishmilkshake: And possible random confusion.
Platinum Eyelash: Everything is rehashed. Everything is deconstruction and reconstruction brought out anew under new lights with many costume changes.
Starfishmilkshake: Yeah, the blueprints are on a constantly moving spreadsheet like a seismograph.
Platinum Eyelash: Richter scale.
Starfishmilkshake: And in 4D.
Platinum Eyelash: 4D, yes!
Starfishmilkshake: I'm sure the Richter scale does come into it somewhere
Platinum Eyelash: That's the arguments part, the crest and trough and rolling waves and stormy seas and moon beams and cleansing rains.
Starfishmilkshake: Yeah
Platinum Eyelash: And electrical wires, disconnecting and reconnecting, two water droplets and a third dropped within the middle to connect the whole.
Starfishmilkshake: Oooh, a chain reaction. I like the water drop analogy.
Platinum Eyelash: Chain reactions, domino effects, wonder twin powers activate.
Starfishmilkshake: Do you believe good overcomes all?
. . . . .
Platinum Eyelash: Hello again.
Starfishmilkshake: What is love?
Platinum Eyelash: The selling and buying kind?
Starfishmilkshake: No, the kind that starts pure before the jading.
Platinum Eyelash: Oh, I haven't met that kind.
Starfishmilkshake: I am trying to figure out if it even exists?
Platinum Eyelash: It doesn't exist. But there are three million variations on trying.
Starfishmilkshake: No, but I think it DOES exist.
Platinum Eyelash: Is THIS love?
Starfishmilkshake: You and me love? Is that where you are going?
Platinum Eyelash: Yes.
Starfishmilkshake: Yeah, I think so. A discombobulated population would think so.
Platinum Eyelash: This is anonymous love.
Starfishmilkshake: The best kind, no?
Platinum Eyelash: The safest, yes.
Starfishmilkshake: Where are the thorns here? Or are there truly none?
Platinum Eyelash: The thorns come in the day. In normal life. In those moments I think of you for two seconds and realize you are only partially real and that I am better off for only having half of truth than all of it.
Starfishmilkshake: I think all of truth is here.
Platinum Eyelash: The rest of them have it wrong.
Starfishmilkshake: Sure, I will raise my glass to that.
Platinum Eyelash: Here's to knowing nothing.
Starfishmilkshake: Here's to you over there and me over here.
Platinum Eyelash: The people out there are getting restless.
Starfish milkshake: It is a top-secret mission to rule the world.
