The following was written as an exercise in writing entirely in dialogue.
“We must strive to be more than we are and yet winning doesn’t garner love. It puts a mark on the winner. A new competition is born among the non-winners to see who will be first to take the crown. Then they decapitate you, put your unadorned head on a pike, light it on fire, and dance while it burns. To avoid this, one might assume it’s best to make no attempt to win at all. But if you aren’t trying, especially if you aren’t trying, you may be kicked where you lie until you do. ‘Get up,’ they might say, ‘Try, so I can fight you. It’s no fun when you lie there like a worm after rain. Get up so I can pin you down again, so I can feel the primal thrill of overcoming.’ Not even catatonia will save you, not even death. In death they will resurrect your image. ‘Get up,’ they’ll say to your puppet, ‘so I can show the world why your life’s work was a waste of the Earth’s finite resources. But don’t worry, there is no one to blame except perhaps your mother and her mother and her mother’s mother.’”
“Maybe I’ll become something else entirely.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Well, anything is possible in this day and age. Maybe I’ll have all of my data destroyed so they can’t resurrect me, and I’ll ask to be euthanized, cremated, and pressed into the ceramic coating of some ultraviolet-sensitive woman’s tinted windows. At least then I could spend my days doing something truly helpful.”
“I thought you were going to say you’d like to become a laborer or a sandwich artist or something.”
“Are sandwiches art?”
“Anything can be art. That’s why it’s so undervalued.”
“Infinite supply, infinite demand.”
“If we could just forget money, we’d all be rich instantaneously.”
“But if we stopped striving for monetary success, who would kick me? I have grown to like the kicking.”
“I’m sure there is someone who would do it for pleasure.”
“Would you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“But why? Please, kick me. I haven’t been touched in ages.”
“If you want me to touch you I will do so lovingly.”
“You would?”
“Yes, I would stroke your hair and braid it and give you little kisses on the top of your head.”
“Only so you could fool me into submission.”
“No.”
“Then you must not be a real human animal.”
“You seem to be ignorant of the fact that even animals take part in nonviolent social behavior. Grooming, for example.”
“So you are animal and I am human?”
“You are an idiot, and I am a fool for trying to explain things to you. Will you ever trust me as your friend or will you always demand to see whether or not I have a knife in my hand before you allow me near you?”
“I told you I welcome it. As useless as I am, if you were to kill me you might at least make the national headlines and then everyone would know you are a great artist.”
“Idiot.”
“So, why don’t you kick me? Kick me! Wait, what are you doing?”
“Everything is going to be all right. Just let me—”
“Okay, I’m on the ground. You’ve got me pinned! Now what?”
“I'm going to braid your hair.”
Thanks for reading!
A prose poem. Reminds me of the pieces in Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen. Very good.
LOVED this. Thanks Annie!