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Overloading the Machine

Last Thursday

Resistance. Channel clicks.
On our walk we turned up stories
Reaching the sky, to climb later.
What fruit rolling in the bowl
You felt me. We explained,
Young, late and invigorated
In the flecked mirror. All patient, insistent.
Past the punctured seams the gown drifts
One early-on press. Coax,
We turned a dry topic or two,
Somber dances of holding out,
You were irrevocable, marching as minutes
The sun couldn't tick, recoiling at some failed mission.
And serene. Arcs to electric,
The path vanishing in twist.
A test
Wrinkles the eyes on either side
These years one visit. It boiled
Rust water of news. It sought
Too much essence in all encounters. From each time bargained
An etched trinket. But observe, incessant plan:
We fly confident. To red box the calendar
On the lover's wall. No doubting hours, the fingertips.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

-- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House"