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Nocturnes: Longer Lives, Longer Distances
Longer lives for longer distances;
longer waiting through longer anticipations
leading to longer reunions:
those words---as their corporate slogan---
obtained generous funding
from however many nations' legislatures
that could not agree on anything else.
She wanted to be spacial
(or a spacial; the grammar works for both)
because I disliked the idea.
A kissing line inaugurated the training and initation,
given that they were expected to spend so much time
together.
teamwork;
No soloists ae welcome among the spacials,
not even in their sleeping quarters.
They hate masturbation like the ancient prudes
of whom History speaks, but for different reasons.
I have learned to hate the Greek alphabet.
Every planet they visit is given
some combination of Greek letters:
some are words, and some nonsense; and only
the initiated can determine what it all means.
Her life will be longer than mine.
The waiting periods will be longer than customary.
"I want to see it all as soon as I can,"
she says (in SpacialSperse, their term
for the amalgamated language they share with other;
but, by God, you the unincluded may not use it).
SpacialSperse reads between the lines
just as easily as any planetary language.
"I want to see it all, apart from you, as long as I can"
is what she really meant to say.
"Every planet gives me new opportunity
"to explore my Spacial identity."
Whore.
Too long in space can make even the heartiest Spacial
incurably spastic. One like that is here, who tells me
between the sputters of consonants and the splatters of spit,
that the word, Whore, sounds about the same
on every planet he ever encountered;
it waits for her on every planet too
while she explores her Spacial identity.
Drop the G forces from the corporate motto:
loner lives for loner distances,
loner waiting.
Loner anticipations await and expect loner amputations
of love, and of bodies two souls play through.
Loner reunions are as hollowly false
as any nation's legislators' handshakes.
Starward
[jlc]
