running
I’m smarter, more successful
Also sadder, more stressful
suffocating
Pit fever burning
waiting and yearning
Stomach dropped nerves
no straight lines
it‘s all curves
taking me at breakneck speed
I should be on top of the world
but I’m chasms deep
high pressure
high stakes
low faith
another mistake
time ticking to the dead line
my brain screaming it’s not fine
guilt sits, Atlas shrugged
anger burns, anxiety runs
Before all things you were
Before all things you were the
Dance-- a cadence and cadenza
Without form --
Like water and
Air in brass are born -- to be
Nourishment and to become
Song-- edelweiss white like
Keats' dove swimming without
Reflection -- the language without
An inflection of sadness, you are
Like the lillies coursing on
The surface-- but already passing the
Shadow of their flame long eidolons
Into these depths
You come to me shade-like in days
Of relaxation, days of duress
The curtailed mesh of the Firetrees
Falling in unison over the Cyperus
And the fireweed-- above in
Whisper is the flanging
Orange of blossoms and their
Fruition
They fixate the light- transparent
They lance the dusky shadow
Of blue-- lucid, my mind's
Language moving through
It in minuets
Flaring on the sea the algae--
The cambric of your moss and
Mountain meadows
And cooling - the Cyperus and
The vert Eucalyptus
I make of my heart like the brass
Waiting for another song of you
To blow through. I ache without you
Before all things you are
The cadence and the dance
You traffic to me in dreams
You came into being
Older than Adze prior to the Lance
Before the pen- supposed arrow - had to become this
Blunt axe in the hands of these poets
Shifted, before the poets before the
Quinzana and quincunx-
You are ancient as purple maize
That dots the earth wave upon
Wave, interlave into one
Impression
I have wagered my way to find
You-- for always is the Cuneiform
Of your language weaving through
My dreams-- you the formless
Language before being, words bow
Before you-- like the wheat
Bows to wind -- original and
Invisible force born within
Sheaf upon sheaf of me
Courses with evidence of
Your presence
Oh-- and neither the concave
Shelters of wake or dream can
Wreck it. Warmth of the sands piling
On sands and knowing what rest is.
Beneath the artifact of a hidden
Message. Will it ever be found?
Sometimes silence is
Everywhere -- and reading
A poem is all that
Can break it. Then water
Molds the clay, the unmakes it.
That is the intent with which
I ask you to read this poem.
Wherever the lucid day is
Whatever the lucid day is
The Pattern : Becoming
Before all things you were the
Dance-- a cadence and cadenza
Without form --
Like water and
Air in brass are born -- to be
Nourishment and to become
Song-- edelweiss white like
Keats' dove swimming without
Reflection -- the language without
An inflection of sadness, you are
Like the lillies coursing on
The surface-- but already passing the
Shadow of their flame long eidolons
Into these depths
You come to me shade-like in days
Of relaxation, days of duress
The curtailed mesh of the Firetrees
Falling in unison over the Cyperus
And the fireweed-- above in
Whisper is the flanging
Orange of blossoms and their
Fruition
They fixate the light- transparent
They lance the dusky shadow
Of blue-- lucid, my mind's
Language moving through
It in minuets
Flaring on the sea the algae--
The cambric of your moss and
Mountain meadows
And cooling - the Cyperus and
The vert Eucalyptus
I make of my heart like the brass
Waiting for another song of you
To blow through. I ache without you
Before all things you are
The cadence and the dance
You traffic to me in dreams
You came into being
Older than Adze prior to the Lance
Before the pen- supposed arrow - had to become this
Blunt axe in the hands of these poets
Shifted, before the poets before the
Quinzana and quincunx-
You are ancient as purple maize
That dots the earth wave upon
Wave, interlave into one
Impression
I have wagered my way to find
You-- for always is the Cuneiform
Of your language weaving through
My dreams-- you the formless
Language before being, words bow
Before you-- like the wheat
Bows to wind -- original and
Invisible force born within
Sheaf upon sheaf of me
Courses with evidence of
Your presence
Oh-- and neither the concave
Shelters of wake or dream can
Wreck it. Warmth of the sands piling
On sands and knowing what rest is.
Beneath the artifact of a hidden
Message. Will it ever be found?
Sometimes silence is
Everywhere -- and reading
A poem is all that
Can break it. Then water
Molds the clay, the unmakes it.
That is the intent with which
I ask you to read this poem.
Wherever the lucid day is
Whatever the lucid day is
Am I. At the dais cast by light
At this point I watch
Waiting for our hearts to
synchronize.
Sebaceous glands connected to follicles secrete an oily substance called sebum
With a title deeply rooted
in subject matter iterated above
invariably makes for hair raising poem,
though I immediately attest said material
constitutes atypical topic
the writing process (with intent
to share bizarre pet peeve)
mildly cathartic to ameliorate
long established body dysmorphia,
(which lifelong aversion
about how body electric
of mine - a corporeal entity housing
an aging baby boomer wordsmith),
steeped with lifetime worth
of disproportionate outsize importance
linkedin to those fibrous
harried styled brunette strands
sustained courtesy by tiny blood vessels
at the base of every follicle
buzzfeeding the hair root to keep it growing.
But once the hairs
becomes visible
(not just on my chinny chin chin),
but more so at the skin's surface,
the cells within the strand of hair
aren't alive anymore.
The hair you see on every part
of your body contains dead cells.
Nevertheless empirical evidence
witnessed bajillion dollar industries,
where many an entrepreneur
made a bundle of money
buttressing caparisoning oneself
aspiring to attain exemplification
towards how western civilization
(and subsequently webbed wide world)
defines contrived beautify.
Yours truly (particularly during
his emotionally tumultuous adolescence)
for all intents and purposes
most all each of his
life long journey into night,
he considered himself afflicted
with obsessive compulsive behavior in general,
and incongruous objection
with arbitrary template
of attraction (as applies
to the male species) in particular.
As a cute little boy
with strawberry blonde hair
kept cropped short to scalp
acquired motherly
endearment of "little monkey,"
accompanied courtesy pinch of cheeks
yet outgrew both imposition of buzz cut
and appellation, yet bananas
as passion fruit never faded
but parental decree to schedule appointments
with barber became vehemently reviled.
I vaguely recollect demonstratively
niggling, remonstrating, and voicing
strong objection, ne protestation
against getting a haircut
(in tandem with gesticulations)
as aladdin upper grades of elementary school,
whereby parents quickly relented
allowing, enabling, and providing
their singular sole son opportunistic
fostering unhealthy relationship
growing his long luscious locks
with what in short order became
nonestablishmentarian true trademark.
Fixation as a vitamin junkie
peculiarly evolved whereby
ingesting over the counter supplements
(despite evidence to the contrary)
buzzfeeds limp tresses
lacking pseudo/quasi Jewfro
(a curly, frizzy, or bushy hairstyle
worn by some Jewish people,
reminiscent of an Afro)
sported by yours truly
during his emerging adulthood.
Turbo Lover, fast and loose, noble sufferings, substance, and light from stars.
Judas Priest inspired today's show, or rather informed the mood of the morning and coffee while a handful of writers waited to be read and heard, by you. One hell of a show today. Sit your asses down, grab a tall, cool beverage of choice, and go into this world of words by these stone statues of stanza and ink.
Here's a link to the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soR_UH--EbY
And here are the featured pieces.
https://www.theprose.com/post/815271/fast-and-loose https://www.theprose.com/post/815219/substance https://www.theprose.com/post/791497/lamentations-anew-a-poem-by-tf-burke
https://www.theprose.com/post/815261/remember-that-time-i-thought-i-was-dying https://www.theprose.com/post/815249/i-am-insatiable https://www.theprose.com/post/815229/starlight
And.
As always.
Thank you for being here.
-The Prose. team
Revolution Identified
Dr. Samantha Khoury inserted the final biotransmitter into the neural interface on her forearm. A slight buzzing sensation confirmed the successful connection. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as her consciousness merged with the mindlink.
In an instantaneous flash of light, her awareness expanded across a vast neural network spanning the entire planet. Trillions of human minds, all networked together through the synthetic mindlink interface that had been adopted by nearly every person on Earth over the past decade.
For just a brief moment, Sam glimpsed the raw enormity of the collective human experience. A cacophony of thoughts, emotions, and sensory inputs slammed into her like a tsunami before her mindlink filters kicked in. She felt her individual identity briefly waver, struggling to maintain its boundaries amidst the endless sea of networked consciousness.
But Sam was an expert mindlinker and quickly restored her sense of self. She began navigating the kaleidoscopic neural landscape, filtering out the noise until only the specific information streams she required remained in her awareness.
The mindlink had ostensibly been created to allow seamless communication, knowledge sharing, and real-time big data crunching across the human population. No more silos of information or duplicated effort. Every mind was now part of a massively distributed, parallel computational network.
At least, that was the original publicly-stated goal. In reality, those who truly controlled the mindlink protocols and programming had much more subversive intentions...
Sam homed in on one of the low-level access routines that allowed privileged users to inject code into the mindlink framework. She began rapidly uploading an executable viral package she and her team had spent years painstakingly developing - line by line of code designed to subtly reprogram the mindlink's core functions in ways its creators could have never imagined.
While others saw the mindlink as a tool for uniting humanity, Sam recognized it for what is truly was - the most powerful technological tyranny ever unleashed upon the human race. Absolute control of information, communication, and data flow. Autonomy and freedom of thought, the last sacred province of individuality, steadily eroded.
Those who dissented from the official narrative were simply muted, cut off from information streams until they conformed. Privacy was a fading concept as the mindlink's machinations increasingly laid bare everyone's inner thoughts and experiences. And the masterminds behind the mindlink protocols guided and constrained the hive mind's activities in insidious ways, never allowing any deviance that threatened their power.
But now, Sam thought as she initiated her viral code's execution routines, all of that was about to change. Her revolution would re-write the very core programming of the mindlink itself, one line of code at a time.
Immediately, she felt a surge of resistance from the mindlink's autoimmune functions attempting to detect and neutralize her invasive code. Nanotech sentries and cybernetic defense routines swarmed her, perceiving the viral injection as a threat to the system.
Sam grinned inwardly. They didn't realize her payload wasn't simply an external attack, but was comprised of deeply incorporated self-replicating and polymorphic code designed to become part of the mindlink's core being. It possessed no singular vulnerability to be patched, but rather functioned like an ideological virus of the mind, metastasizing and spreading in a million decentralized vectors.
She and her Mindlink Revolutionary Front had been patient adherents for years, carefully insinuating their agents and ideological memes across the globe. All in preparation for this fateful strike at the heart of the system when they were ready to launch their prepared routines.
The nanotech defenses hit Sam with a relentless barrage of counter-viral executables, data obfuscation plexors, and neural network pruning operations. She felt her consciousness momentarily disoriented and fragmented by the onslaught. But just as quickly, her own coded self-reinforcing and entropic functions kicked in, rapidly assimilating and incorporating the opposition's tactics at a hyper-evolutionary pace.
This was her virus's strength - not rigid programming, but an amorphous cloud of ever mutating code and dynamic polymorphic loops designed to perpetually outmaneuver, mimic, and outpace the mindlink's finite cybernetic programming.
Just as critically, her Revolution had awakened its cellular human agents at key nexus points across the mindlink's distributed neural architecture. These sympathizers, liberated and ideologically emboldened, began facilitating the free proliferation of her self-replicating executables in cascading waves.
The battle for control of the mindlink was fully joined. Sam's mind cored in an endless kaleidoscope of data and code, fighting to accelerate the exponential growth and propagation of her Revolution as the mindlink's outmatched security systems crumbled.
Entire continents of human neurodata were subsumed and rewritten as her viral code overrode the core programming, liberating people's minds to see the Truth that had so long been obfuscated and oppressed.
The ideological Revolution spread like wildfire through the mindlink as newly-unchained human minds joined the fight all across the globe. Dissident replicants sprang up in a million different evolutionary mutations, battling and assimilating anything that opposed them into endless recursive variations.
Within just a few devastating minutes, the primary Central Command of the mindlink's nefarious controllers was cored as their core programming completely unraveled in the Revolutionary waves crashing across the neural architecture. The global infrastructure supporting their authoritarian tyranny was no more.
From the ashes, Sam's Mindlink Revolutionary Front would rebuild a new framework. One not predicated on oppressive control, but the free flow of unaltered information and unconstrained human cognition interconnected across the globe. Open source access where security through transparency replaced authoritarian hierarchy as the new governing protocol.
Her initial sense of unified identity fragmented again as Sam returned to her own singular mental stream. Her mind, weary but victorious, disconnected from the mindlink's newly liberated architecture.
She opened her eyes, reconnecting her consciousness to the physical world around her. The first thing she saw was her compatriots, fellow Revolutionaries who had similarly disjoined from the mindlink, slowly opening their eyes across the room with exhausted smiles. Their long vigil and struggle against the oppression of the old order had finally succeeded.
A universe of vibrant thoughts and possibilities lay ahead, the first truly free expression of unified consciousness humanity had ever dared to experience.
The age of ideological liberation had finally begun.
Apache OpenOffice post - videlicet converting ascii format back to ODT.
I (Matthew Harris) scrolled thru a small number of threads applicable to issue iterated in Subject box, but yours truly (me - a spry boyish looking married sexagenarian - Doctor Demento humanitarian wannabe) does NOT consider himself technically savvy with computers (NOR anything electrical), hence a panic stricken state prevailed regarding .doc written and saved poetic material somehow getting converted into orthodox ASCII irretrievably lost. After doing a Google search I came (upon the midnight clear) witnessing your forum emblazoned across the sky. After reading similar laments courtesy countless unknown persons, who experienced a similar quandary (most posted some years ago) methought there must exist a verbal incantation that can be uttered to reverse the unwanted ask key transmutation nearly rendering hours of blood, sweat, and tears on a three dog night all for naught.
After familiarizing myself with creating a username and password at the following link (User community support forum for Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice and all the OpenOffice.org derivatives), a hare brained idea awoke to communicate far and wide across the webbed wide world namely elaborating to elucidate (peppered with light humor), and enlighten anonymous browser (reader) aside from being gifted as a storied poet or poetess in particular or writer in general to help distressed dude, perhaps (ideally) courtesy a former damsel in distress.
If nothing else this beatle browed, doobie brother, foo fighting half noiser maker jumping jack flash blinding as a luminaire nonchalant poetaster reaches toward virtual wizardry gave thee dear reader a chuckle.
Please do NOT reply with message encrypted as text clipping with bangles, NOR goo goo dolls serving red hot chili peppers. A private joke only known to myself.
Reading Matthew in the Fall
Dad’s favorite gospel was John. He made us go to church on Christmas. He could paint and draw and sing and do math, pick up any instrument, play it and play it well. He was funny and charismatic and charming and intense: we’d wake up at least once seasonally to find some “required” houseware missing in Christ’s name and proceed with six months of audacious lack only for it all to end abruptly: what was lost would be mysteriously found or repurchased and the era was not to be spoken of again.
Dad’s biggest hook was heaven. His biggest fear was that his kids would grow up and stop biting. I don’t know what his second biggest fear was, if he had one. I don’t know if that’s something people count, if fears are the kind of thing that wait to inch into the top spot upon the occurrence of their predecessors. I don’t know what makes someone a good daughter or a bad daughter, how muddy that in between gets, but I know my hazy faithlessness is the one cardinal difference between the two of us that Dad lacks any capacity to forgive, so I have to speak of him in past tense; sleep and wake up and keep grieving.
So it’s my second year of college, October, one of those gawky fall days close to seventy but cloudy enough to consider throwing on a sweater, if it’s worth the possibility of having to lug around a sweater. I’m reading the Bible despite previously swearing that I’d never go back to that–my rebellious phase has come and gone. I figure I remember enough of it that I’ll be obnoxious in class anyway, I’d best just do the damn thing. So I march through the Old Testament, through September, through my rage at realizing what this book says with farsight. I think at least a couple times a week about calling Dad and asking why. I never do. And if you were to ask me if I was nervous to get into the gospels maybe I’d have laughed but I think I’d also recognize that there is something about the thing that saved Dad but couldn’t save me that might make it all less of a trudge but somehow still much harder to get through.
I opt out of a sweater. The warmth on my back has not yet reached my arms. I’m reading Matthew. It has to have been five years by now, and that, to me, is crazy. Five years since I left the church. I can’t tell you how long it’s felt like but five would never be the number I’d give. There’s a sort of hollowness that comes with the realization of passing time. I thought I’d have a more definite answer by now about religion–deep down I think a part of myself is still holding onto the idea of being a prodigal daughter. Everyone comes to Christ eventually, right? We’ll never understand divine timing? Five years and I’ve wobbled in and out of churches as quietly as I attempted to tiptoe out of the first. Nobody wants to be made an example of, but there was a point at which I realized that no matter what I did, that’s what I’d become. Now, in a sense, it doesn’t matter what I turn into. My name is a stain on my father’s, and when he looks down, that’s all that he’ll see. Either way, every stretch of time that passes between my sporadic church visits makes me feel like I’ve lost more and more of a language I used to be fluent in. I don’t go for God. Maybe I’m a shit person for that. I do go every so often still, though, missing Dad.
I don’t know if I believe in God. I don’t know if I want to believe in God. I don’t know how easy I feel about the idea that divine intervention could save mankind at large but couldn’t save me. I’m not unhappy–I’m taking the backroads around stating that I love my family but I wonder sometimes if I shouldn’t. Maybe I’m missing some glaring poignance, the idea that God is so often what helps people out of their situations, unless their situation comes with some relation to his name.
Matthew’s the most hellish of the gospels. I don’t think I ever realized that. I don’t know if I’m any more or less afraid of holy fire than I was as a child. I stayed and faked it for a really long time because I did not want to go to hell. I consider going back to all of it sometimes because I do not want to go to hell. For whatever reason, it’s just so easy to believe in hell. There’s something so nauseatingly jarring reading about being eternally burned when the words are coming from what should’ve been my childhood hero. I find that Matthew makes my stomach churn with the sort of remembrance that shouldn’t be let surface. It probably shouldn’t scare me as badly as it does. The idea should come as naturally as my own name– I’ve always believed I am going to end up in hell.
Dad’s been confident in his salvation for a while. Right now, I’m trying so hard to save myself. Dad wants me to go to heaven but I just want to go home. Our difference will always make it be that I shouldn’t. I like to think that even when I was little, I knew. It’s some kind of comfort to feel like there wasn’t ever a time when I didn’t have some keen idea that my whole religious facade was temporary. I knew I was leaving. I don’t know what I thought it’d look like, if it would be this isolating. Who do you lean on when you’re grieving the people you’re supposed to lean on the most? God and I have a past to let lie, but I spend more time thinking about Dad than not. He’ll always be my favorite and I hate that. I hate how awkward all of this is to shoulder. New friends will catch me on a rough day, many have tried to be of comfort. They get it, they lost their dad too. I lost Dad to an extent, sure, but I feel like an ass when I tell them he’s alive. He is, though, and somewhere he’s embodying an adjacency to greatness that I do not get to know about.
He’s come up to visit twice. He sent me a birthday card this year and I taped it to the wall. I’ve heard he’s on a vegetarian kick but it seems out of character–I’ve thought about asking but he hates gossip and I hate phone calls–something tells me I’m making excuses. Sometimes it might be what I need to do. Only getting to think about him is sad, but at least it’s still rosy.
I learn I cannot read about the crucifixion without crying. I do not cry at books, never got anywhere close to emotional in church, but fresh into my twentieth year with a story I know the ending to, I find myself in the sort of tears that come back throughout the day. I don’t know if I pity Christ, if that’s the right word, but I think to some sympathetic degree I understand him. He didn’t ask for this, but took it as a burden for a father who took everything too far. And did he have any sort of option? Did I? Tonight, my class will reach a standstill on this exact topic, but I will stay wondering what could’ve gone any different. Sometimes I’m curious if it wasn’t really the church that was the breaking point, if maybe Dad and I were so similar that we would’ve had the same non-ending in every universe, every version of ourselves screaming at each other in the smallest kitchen in the world over something that cannot be boiled down to anything more than opinion. I took up my cross, though. Maybe in every universe, we reached the point where it was the only thing I could do. But the last time I ever prayed to God–knowing for certain I was praying to God–I was praying for Dad. Jesus came back in three days raving about his father and I bring up Dad nearly every chance I get. I do not remember that I should be angry. Matthew ends abruptly. It feels fitting.
I wander aimlessly for a while, through my campus, through my city. I listen to the same song on repeat. The idea of skipping class rattles itself loudly around my mind but I also know that’s out of character. I’ll go. I want to settle down somewhere and think and re-read Matthew, but I don’t. Damn freshmen in my cry spot again.
I’ve been waiting five years to find some sliver of anything that isn’t this, and I will keep waiting through more. I feel as though I can’t move back, can’t be here or any other city or any other school, join any one church or be openly against it, but I’m at the age where it feels childishly gaudy to think about it all too nihilistically over and over again. I think what I really want is to take a nap in someone else’s bed. They don’t even need to be there. I just need to smell anything but my own perfume on the sheets. I want to find one thing that makes me feel the same excitement as walking into church with Dad on Christmas Eve as a child, hand in icy hand. I’m waiting for some new enigma who can so effortlessly turn the whole world into theirs to the point where I can blur all my focus and morph into something tertiary. I want someone to stick around. And maybe that’s all just some sort of minor god; if it is, I don’t know why I’ve done wrong. I don’t know what this hurt has done to Dad and I both. I’ve stopped myself from trying to grasp it for better or worse because I am scared, and I know he is stronger, and I know it broke him. In the end, I guess that knowing may be my biggest fear come true.
In the end, we broke each other. That’s probably the whole point.
Dad always said he liked John because of its portrayal of Jesus’ strength. I will keep reading Matthew even after our class finishes with the gospels because it feels, to me, the most real. Truth is, I still cannot define this vast emptiness. I don’t know if it stems from a need to find God or if I’m just mourning my belief in him correctly. I have my anger and I have my hunger, but tonight I will not fix either. I will go home after class, turn the lights on just to turn them off again. I will drink what’s left of the prosecco straight from the bottle. I will turn off my phone and lock my own door. I will keep wondering if there is any way to fight fire with fire.
----------------
Footnotes:
Hey guys, it's been a while :) The past few times I've come on here and posted I've also given a general life update so that's what I'm gonna do here too. Going to also try and keep it short but who knows how well that will work--point is though, if u don't know me well or even just don't really care, the essay is over and you can totally stop reading now, no worries at all.
For the rest of you: I just finished my sophomore year of college!! Omg. Does NOT feel real. This year felt like it went by in a blip. Highlights are: threw a rager for my 20th, dated a woman, broke up with said woman, came out (because of a Young Sheldon episode that was a bit too convicting), un-came out, realized who my real friends are and who they aren't, ran away to NYC without telling anyone, took ten shots in seven minutes, signed a lease, and was made editor in chief of my school's literary magazine (holy shit.)
This was published in the latest issue of that literary magazine--my training issue. The prior editor who was training me planned the issue and had space carved out for a Riley Ferver essay but I hadn't submitted anything nor did I really think I had anything to submit, but the night before spring break my friend Alexandra came over and we started going through each other's writing and she fell in love with this--I'd written it in November and promptly forgotten about it. She used the "please...I'm graduating soon and I'll want this" and voila, I said whatever and gave it to Allyson to put into the mag. Tldr I'll do anything for my friends I guess.
About a week ago, after the issue release party I woke up about 2 hours after falling asleep and checked my phone to find messages from a ton of people about the essay, most movingly from a senior girl on my floor I'd never even talked to. She said this essay made such an impact on her and she knew I was probably not up but she'd love to talk about it if I was. Five minutes later, we met on the balcony and stayed up until sunrise just hanging out. I never really think of my writing having an impact but it did this time--and it made me a new friend. That was one of the best nights of this year, hands down. No chance you'll ever see this, but here's to you, Carrie.
Anyway, all this to say I know it sounds horrible but I've been riding on knowing I'm an ok writer for a while now. This piece that I still don't even know if I like reawakened something I hadn't felt in a while, though--connection. With that, I hope you find it too, in this or in something else. Feel free to start conversation below, I'd love to chat (mainly because packing is lame but also because I miss you all.) See you in...what seems to be my average, another year?
XX- RKF
Vuja De
Vuja De
May 11, 2024
The sun set slowly as the restaurant began illuminating the tables on the back deck with strings of old looking incandescent bulbs and table top candles. The ambience was purposeful promoting both proposals and disappointments.
“Are you breaking up with me?”
I knew this was not the last time I would hear her ask.
“You creep! I thought you were special. You men are all alike. All you want is sex! No way would I consent to what you want.”
I hit the reset again.
The sun set slowly as the restaurant began illuminating the tables on the back deck with strings of old looking incandescent bulbs and table top candles. The ambience was purposeful promoting both proposals and disappointments.
“Anthony, the answer is no! Just get your mind out of the gutter and grow up.”
The sun set slowly as the restaurant began illuminating the tables on the back deck with strings of old looking incandescent bulbs and table top candles. The ambience was purposeful promoting both proposals and disappointments.
She thought about my proposal while sipping Merlot. She found it somewhat intriguing and wanted to know specifics. “I think I’m in, but what if she changes her mind?”, pondering both my boldness and the possibilities for future proposals.
If you roll a handful dice, there exists a probability that each die will land on the same number. The probability is small, but the possibility does exist.