๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ ๐ข๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ต ๐ช๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ธ
About once an Earth week,
I go above.
โ
The Monks take me.
I donโt know their names.
Their real names.
If they have names.
What they call themselves.
How they conceive of themselves.
If they conceive.
If they have selves.
They have me, now.
Iโm in the Container.
The Monks are from TRAPPIST-1 e.
โTwelve-and-a-half parsec hop.โ
Rabelais told me, clear as a bell.
In words that werenโt.
Wireless, wordless.
Funny name for a planet.
Gotta wonder the purpose.
Canโt imagine itโs what they call it.
But then, I canโt understand them.
Wireless, wordless.
Generation of a voice.
Their speech โ if itโs to be understood as speech โ is mouthless, unvoiced, direct.
Feinting prayers.
Laserly.
Tunnel-vision hymnal.
Communication by impression.
Execution in expression.
Over-air telepathy.
Invisible gestures.
Formless.
Yes.
Wireless, wordless.
Yes.
A world of the wordless.
Yes.
Blessed silentists.
They come as a quartet.
Always the four.
Rabelais, Guido, Hildegard, and Teresa.
Straight to your door.
The Monks are here to collect.
Pick me up.
Beaming.
Yearly check-in.
Every 6.1 Earth days.
The duration of their orbit.
I know when to expect them.
And I always look forward to it.
Clairvoyant.
Like celestial clockwork.
Silent fire in the sky.
Cloaked, stealthy.
Flung-in on stellar winds.
Seemingly unseen to the unobservers.
Or unobserved, as the case may be.
Unobservant.
Underserved.
Shepherd or serpent.
All under heaven.
Severed of murmurs.
I am Observed.
Contained.
Prodded, intruded.
Floated in solutions.
Emptied of pollutants.
Indeed โ probed.
Pains taken, gone.
Beyond what the sunโs shown.
And for that I am blessed.
A disassembled abductee.
Into the vat.
Solve me, dissolve me.
Oceanic.
Grateful to operate under their spell.
Cellular bindings.
To be operated upon.
Reconditioned.
In the painless chamber.
An ecstatic exorcism.
Out-of-body orgasm.
Barnacles, scraped.
Burdenโs slump erased.
Plaque eradicated.
Wear unwound.
An end to unease.
Stresses diminished, dismissed.
Tensions resolved.
Unclenched.
Relief.
Release.
Refinement.
File-me-down.
Cleansing.
Smoothing.
Amniotic soothing.
โTrauma,โ is it, youโre calling it?
Well thatโs a You thing.
JอamesQอuentinDอevine
๐ ๐ ๐
m.v.d.