Page 29 - ADU Voice Volume 5 Issue 1
P. 29
Fall 2025 | Voice 29
Thought is thankfully an act of some kind, There is the sum of ten and a half infant figures strung
because otherwise perhaps it wouldn’t along the lines of her encasement. Which, of course, in
be sufficient replacement for reform. that profound profoundness out of which profundities
emerge, is a rope. A conventional gown is beneath.
He wants to leave.
“ … How they manage to suspend them in such a way,
But he is here. And he watches, still and unsteady with oh my days.” Suspend, oh yes, the bright sister of hang.
the tremor of exhaustion tingling tired feet. He tells
them ten minutes more, though he knows there It’s only when Abigail taps his shoulder and takes
are twenty. A lie is not a lie if you know its truth. his hand away from the side of his aching temple
that he looks at the woman herself. The first to
Such truth as the lady standing in the back, smile. He cannot shake the intrusion that it seems
behind a curtain, waiting for her cue. He knows she wants to laugh. Gorgeous ginger curls loop
she is there not because he can see her, but circles around themselves and dangle against
because he can hear infant flesh recede delicate shoulders, one of which sports the only
against her waist and whine, whine, baby awake. Its head steers with a robotic whirr,
whine as older skin seals it shut. burrowing mechanic eyes into pairs more alive.
Abigail doesn’t seem to look Charlie wants to talk now, it seems. “What –
anywhere near the curtain. what does this one mean?” “Isn’t it obvious?”
None of the Abigails and “Humor me.” Please. Tell me I do not see
none of the Charlies. Only what I see. I mustn’t see what I see. If
this one, the one who isn’t right. seeing is doing and doing is thinking -
I do not want to think. I want to leave.
When he loosens his tie - by
the time neurons come to “Nourishment.” Ah, that’s right.
nerves come to action The audience must be nourished.
come to release - it is her The audience must be content,
cue. She steals him away. gulping tender milk as they gawk and
Metaphorically, though clap. And to nourish one, of course,
his eyes beg to be betrayed to nourish the world, is to exploit.
- very literally, he can hear
them against the inside of his ear. Right, the faulted Charlie
thinks, is insane. He leaves.
