Chain of Causation

Past a given, but untold, threshold the mind suggests it’s OK to let people do 
what they want, for a change. They start composing texts by dictation straight- 
up phone to face—carefully noting where punctuation goes—in public spaces  
and don’t even feel awkward about it. They relent and let the dog start sleeping 
in the bed after years of principled, ironclad prohibition. We heave a collective 
soft sigh, let the weird bad queso go and eat it anyway while expending a surfeit  
of sympathy for the disappointing play of millionaires which assures us: failure is 
very much on the table. Maybe a waypoint, maybe the furthest one can take it.  
Let me wonder aloud why it can be so ungainly hard to say out loud what a heart  
holds as secret knowledge. The angel may speak; one may be well-versed in sunk  
cost fallacies; one may possess uncanny knowing like the top 10 fictional sheriffs. 
By design no archetype is private. It’s a fact of the South that killing a best pig 
to make a cornbread for the right occasion is what some recipes require. Get thee 
to the abattoir. Science last week isolated the molecular stew in the brain stem  
that can convince us opening email feels just like being stalked by killer wolves. 
Baby, I know it’s not enough to say I love you and reanimate the kindred to rot.  
Not everyone is a Pisces for God’s sake. Even my therapist, a merchant of hope,  
keeps a live file of unforgivable acts. One cannot replace a purge valve to solve 
an engine knock without, on account of the subframe, incurring a realignment.  
To wit: wins must be bought, but the cost is a dear investment in this frivolous, 
bricoleur world, in tender flesh, faith that faith is good despite the evident war 
crimes, the gratuitous bulldozing of gardens by armored tanks, the ever-present 
likelihood of error, incompetence, and injury. If points could be hung on a defense 
any other way, if I could tack a surcharge onto service fees or lease out roof-space  
to raise sufficient funds—if I could, affording this provocation, to cover repairs, 
invent the code that once compiled runs uninterrupted unmutilating as it goes 
honey I would I swear.