rubber bands

do you suppose elastics know about things like causality///

I mean, dogs have some understanding of this. do you think they know about anger///

do they know what it's like to resent your loved ones for success in the ways you find yourself going without?

how about hard drugs and contented sighs after stretching in the morning? they must know about that one. stretching, I mean. I can't bring myself to believe they don't know about it. it would be unbearable to let myself think that they don't see it coming. and if they never see it coming, then they must not remember. every time it happens, it's a new sensation of the body.

you're little. I gesture indistinctly at you. you're that many years old. okay. blue-dark curtains line every wall and your sheets are piled atop your body. you dwell in a world of steam. everything is too hot and sweat accumulates in your soft nightwear, but you know something is wrong. you feel off, but you don't know why. shift and shift, fight the weight of the covers above and the way your garments seem to fit so wrong, your attention is directed elsewhere.

you lie on the surface of a warm-cold pool and it has you now. the sensation is barely recognizable because the gravity of uncertainty clings to you tighter. what do you do? you've never been here before. with time, it's only more uncomfortable and it becomes apparent that something must change. maybe you can seek help? do you know how to solve this problem yourself? maybe you do, you're ... that many years old already. do you know you've wet the bed for the first time since you were a baby?

the clerk sits at the check-in counter at the Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City, Michigan. he anxiously fiddles with an elastic band he found in the drawer. stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch – once every second, right to its point of maximum tension. does it not have memory? flies don't have brains tuned for memory. most living things only have rudimentary memory at best. his thumb and forefinger spread. the elastic band doesn't know its body can do that. it's filled with shock and time moves differently for it – every second, it's the first time you were grating cheese or a vegetable and your finger found the blades. you gasp and hold your hand and stare. the world draws cold sheets up around you. stretch, stretch, stretch.

it can't be that cruel. I don't believe it. so they must remember what it feels like to be pushed to your limits and to not break, to never break. to snap is to die. do they know about being tied back together? is anyone ever really the same when that happens?

you stretch and stretch and stretch and you're plucked to make a sound. is this your purpose? you know what your body is capable of, but is that what's destined for you? how many elastic bands are used for their intended purpose? you're tucked away in a drawer. one day, you're taken to bundle seven or eight #2 pencils together. the bundle shrinks one by one until it's just you again, loosely coiled. you and one hundred of your kind in a box somewhere else. what does it mean to be held, to be touched? does it feel good to be discovered, a pleased and sly smile drawn across someone's face, and pulled back and slung at an unsuspecting victim? does it feel meaningful? do you feel alive?