the relative, in drag

Netflix put to bed for another night, he turned all but the chair-side light off and grinned in the soft xmas lights carpeting the living room floor from the balcony. While there was much electrical wizardry vying for his attention, he felt hemmed in by none of it. Eyes closed, he followed the chatter down to the sacred space where the world was birthed moment to moment in sputtering then firehosed thoughts:

~

that Zoom call that ended without event, then the one that did, faces Brady-Bunched on the computer screen then one by one popped out like bubble wrap and bounced around the room and off the walls like an errant 80's video game

and he could touch each one and hear their narratives; two each - no-more, no less.

first - the one they repeated to themselves and the world. who they were, what had happened to who they were, and the need to change that;

second - simply the first, but preverbal: images and senses and perceptions (not conceptions) dancing and gelling and metamorphosing

~

the first was where the juice was; all sticky spots holding the persona in a deceptively strong vice grip, but the second - that's where the power lay:

psychic striation, from
prose to words to letters to images to THAT

or

harmony to chords to notes to vibrations to THAT

or an AND instead of an OR

absolute and relative wound around each other like a psychic Caduceus, held by a Moses on the mountain or a Siddhi-yogi by the Ganges or a Sufi before the movement

and while the first was simply the second in drag he took as much joy in it as Grace would allow

before the pop of a balcony red and green LED going out dropped him back into first person

intuiting the second
and following its scent
below REM to the dreamless state
where THAT readied him for more THIS
endless portals in the day
yet to come