Speed is the slowness of recognition, the depth of self, the extent of longing
Of belonging, of returning home
Not knowing where home is
In the expanse of being
Sending, transmitting, urging, pushing, pulling
Talking.

Now talk is another thing
In which speed lay hidden
Coiled to strike
And carry away in a towering verbal Tsunami
Forgetting, forgetting speed, forgetting the slowness, depth, extent, belonging, returning, knowing
Magnetized toward the other
That often misses
But sometimes hits
Smack dab in the eye and heart
Where you're to be trusted.

Not some dawdling, dangling 350-year-old veil of power
Woven by fading generals and diplomats who tired of struggle
And turning to immortality in texts, stone and grandiloquent mausoleums.
It is the sigh of home, the speed that caresses.

fiction