AT THE STOA

A date. Colloquially referring to a time, perhaps for a meeting, or a date. It is also a space. The thing with online shit is that it fragments space from time.  You do talk in real time, but the distance is a motherfucker. Both of you acknowledge that, either implicitly or explicitly, it is there. Some sort of intensity, or at least constancy, has to be there to make it work. However, there is also a constant danger to constancy, for it makes you hope. That is one step away from the realm of demand. But due to the nature of your communication, can you even make demands? How? Your connection started with an originary chasm which cannot be filled unless the fragmentation becomes erased, as stated, by either intense commitment or moving. This fragmentation of space and time cannot be sustainable unless by fortitude from both ends which makes both of you consciously and deliberately and continually address this fragmentation. It's exhausting, it has to be. Distance is a motherfu...

How gentle, this thing was Like the breath of a butterfly dreaming (Do butterflies breathe? Do they dream?) As though there was nothing there, But I felt its gossamer touch nonetheless. Like delicate wings barely having touched skin. It made me not want to grip, And have shields made of flowers. Maybe I had too large a hand, For such a faint thing to bear being on. Maybe it awoke from a dream, A dream of a man in the ancient East, Or it was dreaming of humans. No matter. This butterfly also made me dream. No matter what awoke from both dreams, My shields are now stones.