By The Will Of The Wind

By the will of the wind, these desert faces look to the south-east and smile. It isn’t victory they smell, nor the promise that their brothers and sisters made it out alive. It isn’t the thought of their long lost loves that carries them high on this godforsaken day. It is the wind itself, that announces, with its affirming touch, the possibility of change.

Like Russian defense, we let ourselves be influenced. I give you the tools to change me, without corrupting my spirit. Next year I may fall in love with a violinist who has the softest hands that bear the calluses of classical training. I may fall in love with a Persian salesman, his face eroded by the desert sand, his hands rough from bargaining.

We will love quietly for a while. Up until the point he knows I am me and I know he is him, and people start to sense the wires of mystical unity when they walk between us. It will then be time to peacefully proclaim our shared intentions, upon which several households of parental wisdom will stagger so passionately they will frighten their horses.

And it will be war. It will be war alike those my forefathers faced. Wars in the deserted South, Wars up the crowded North. I will be wondering about my brothers and sisters, remembering their familiar faces, in the knowledge I would not recognize them anymore. But, there will always be the wind, unexpected and untamed. And there will be clarity.

A history is held together by seemingly uneventful days.

Let us not forget the butterfly effect of our births, and each step following another.

Imperceptible Resistance

The sounds that computers make, those high continuous beeps that get louder the second you start to notice, as if it they were aching for attention; they lie heavy on my heart. Just like the stains in the almost-orange carpet on the gray lit hallway floors of this off-colored building. This is my office. I have been working here for countless months, the reasons all money related. Because it’s needed, that money, it is always needed. I am an “assistant manager”, or so it is printed on my pay-check. That sounds as though I am a manager that assists, but I merely just assist the manager. Assisting a manager means virtually nothing. It is picking up slack. It is crunching tiny numbers in tiny Excel fields for the first thirty minutes of my eight and a half hour working day, and looking occupied for the rest of my presence in the office. Over the course of the first four weeks of work, I have moved my computer screen ever so slightly each day, until it reached the point where my boss could no longer see what I was doing. Every morning before he came in, I would sit on his seat to see how much more I had to tilt it away from his view. I told myself it was an assistant manager’s right to have a little privacy during her daily web-comic reading activities. He did a good job pretending not to notice. If he cared at all, that is.

My boss will sit on his chair all day, occasionally giving me a tiny chore. Fax some orders, call some companies, help a colleague. As he assigns me these chores, he will drink his coffee as he always does; with a slurping sound at the root of every. single. sip, and an awfully loud swallow as the coffee dives into free-fall alongside the borders of his esophagus. Then, to make sure everyone in the office realizes how much he enjoyed it, follows a satisfied “Haaaaaah” as the sip’s grand finally.  He drinks coffee all day long. Cans and cans of coffee enter and exit him every single day of the week. I know, because I have to refill those cans. I offer to do it quite frequently because it gives me a legitimate reason to wander though the halls from time to time. I make it a priority to leave my desk at least six times a day. If only to escape the smell of computer heat and electricity, printer ink and old dust. It is a lonely place. Tired routines resonate between these unpainted walls, and tremble in the voices of my older colleagues who have been working here for over twenty years. Twenty years. The thought of it alone creates a feeling which I have over time dubbed “frustrated-spinal-boredom”, a sense of severe claustrophobia in a place where you can technically still move your body. I drown my sadness during the day, I dip it in bad coffee and talks of shitty politics until it floats still on the surface of my not-even-close-cappuccino. They know me by now. I don't have to prove myself anymore, and that is why I did not even bother to remove the red scattered nail polish residue of my nails, or actually dress appropriately in the early morning.

It is ok.

I don't have to pretend I am well composed. I can even start complaining about my shoulders somewhere around lunchtime. They have known me for a sufficient enough time to strongly state that they think I work well. Completely competent and reliable, that is what I am. I just pass the time. Every single minute of it. I malfunction in this reality, a glitch in these eight-thirty  to five schedules. I can't believe they haven't found out yet. I am a Fake! I want to yell out. Can’t you see?! I don’t belong here! Maybe I'm a good actress. Maybe it is because I'm always on time and remember everything that is said to me. I could start fabricating some intentional mistakes, spread them cautiously over these desks, and wait for the bells to ring or the alarms to go off, depending on the intensity of the shock. But then - maybe it is too late for mistakes. They will probably say kindly, “Oh that's alright girl, don't you worry about that, you just had a rough week.”

I will smile and nod agreeably.