A Pattern Forms

Sometimes on nights like this--

when I've shut myself up in my dark room,

when my only company is Miles and Coltrane,

when I lie on my bed in my uncomfortably hot clothes,

when my eyes are grateful! for nothing to look at,

when my heartbeat slows,

though my mind finds some peace,

still,

I can't help wondering.

"Why do we care and invest and hurt all the time? Why do we do this to ourselves?" asked the tortoise, analyzing the sequence of events that led it here, now thinking them shamefully small.

The tortoise's creator knew that these things mattered to the tortoise--as trivial as they may seem to anyone else--and after a long moment, said,

"Because we can."

-rae