Beneath Stars Long Extinct

Brownian Motion

106 Brownian Motion It’s a tough job, this thing of coming together, then the leavings. Our hopes rise and recede in cages of our ribs as each new love steps to shade we provide. Marseilles to the Cape of Good Hope, West Memphis to Brisbane. It’s pretty much the same everywhere. Average ejaculatory speed is 28 miles per hour (45 kph). We rush our lives to get here, these few seconds, over and over, decades on and on, where we’re unself-conscious, blissful, dumb. Headlights on the ceiling remind us an entire involuntary network’s out there, moving without our command, yet bringing us the things we can’t do without; things preventing us from withering alone: wine, eyeliner, shoe lifts. Once entering the vagina, sperm take five minutes to cross six inches of love’s terrain to the cervix. That’s .0011 miles per hour, and that makes sense. We run to love—doing pushups while waiting for the phone, back-waxing, cleaning compulsively— whatever. Then it’s here, for a bit, and we’re breathing hard until we’re sated, granted-taking, fat. And across every map there’s the arrhythmic flutters—unseen sea tides expanding, and not— 107 in countless chests. There’s the hope it’ll last, and it won’t, because we don’t. It’s a job of millimeters and seconds, of random chance. It’s eyes locked with a stranger in a packed subway car. It is the blessed tension until the lights flicker out. This page intentionally left blank. ...