Feeling feelings

  Once upon a time there was a very large man who walked into a very small house.
   Or was it a very small man who walked into a very large house?
   For certain, there was a man and a house. He was larger than many things inside the house, smaller than others, but he did not hold that against the things because they were only things after all.
   This was a most reasonable man. He was not given to pointing out the shortcomings of such and thus.
   What is the point, thought the reasonable man, of falling in love? This was a reasonable question for a reasonable man to ask. In a world where some things are large and others small, what difference can one man’s love make?
    There will always be things to make us feel feelings. The man was not immune to such things — feeling feelings — but what is the point, thought the thoughtful man, of such indulgence when there are driveways to be shoveled and the snow grows so deep?
   There was a thoughtful man standing waist deep in snow. He could not for the life of him remember how he got there. But he shoveled. He shoveled nonetheless.

Lifetimes

A toothless old man gave the gift of a tiny porcelain woman. Do not break this. If you drop her, she will shatter into more pieces than an infinite rebirth of lifetimes could ever repair. The tiny porcelain woman had been broken and patched, but the mended seams held together, reinforcing the woman with memories of past survival. The tiny porcelain woman would not stay on a low shelf. There was no safe place, so she moved through the world with her breaks unhidden.

***

The tiny porcelain woman arrived with a statement of provenance: This is the dancing universe revealed. The toothless old man laughed when he handed her over. I tried, but the woman would not live wrapped in a box in the attic labeled Fragile. I wept at my failure before it arrived. The porcelain woman and the toothless old man frolicked in those tears like children splashing in the ocean calling out through waves, This is the tale of forms.

 ***

A stone man held a porcelain woman in the soft summer dusk. They perched on a high rooftop closest to the moon with no dream of flight. The girl whispered into the stone man’s ear, This is the lesson of withstanding fear. In one story, they crumble into dust when they hit the earth. In another, they float into space then explode as stars sparkling across the hot evening sky. In yet another they leap again and again into new lifetimes beyond imagining.