Talking in Monologues - Jan 14 2025

 

Talking in Monologues

Jan 14 2025



We correspond.

Exchange emails

talk in monologues.

We are like stringers overseas

  —   locals, who know the place   —

shaping stories

for the folks at home.

Or the foreign correspondent

living a glamorous life

in exotic capitals

and fantastic Shangri-Las,

in war zones

that are both deadly

and cinematic.

Which sounds like fun

when you're standing on the bus

at 6 in the morning

commuting to work.

 As if reinventing ourselves

won't be noticed.

Because language can be honed, shaped, buffed,

while face-to-face

we mumble, stumble, bite our tongues,

show up

with shirts untucked

flies undone,

the bad haircut

you gave yourself.

And if not reinvention

then reduction

  —   distilling ourselves into words;

flesh and blood

reduced to abstract thought.

Which, while a little glib

and disagreeably cool

can also be vulnerable.

Because there’s an intimacy

to the written word;

it’s a way to let them in,

a license

to reveal the things

you can’t so easily speak.

And paradoxically

print can be a fortress, as well;

you can hide in it,

or from behind its walls

let loose your own boiling oil.

Our epistolary relationship,

conveniently sanitized

of human frailty.

Because the written word is not just easy

it’s comfortable;

no need

to disrupt your routine,

no risk

you’ll actually meet

and disappoint the reader.

Too bad they’re also slippery

artful

bloodless.

That it’s so easy to deceive with them.

And then start to believe

the truths you’ve fudged

the lies you’ve told yourself.

Kind of inspired by social media, where most people present a carefully curated image: an ideal life led by a hypothetical self.

But also inspired by the back and forth emails between me and with my first reader: conducted pretty much through only the written word.