Jenny-fa

I remember the last time we did that. I was only six or seven. I was furious that time, too. Seized, perhaps, by fancy or necessity (and the scissors having already been stowed away), I obtained a knife from the kitchen, then proceeded to saw away at a sheet of paper. A sullen child, naked blade in hand. See those eyes glower! I wonder why he didn't wrest the thing away from me.

But of course, I know. The same reason those false, impish smiles and chuckles continue unfazed around me. Because life wouldn't be quite the same without that obstinate, habitually reticent background fixture. If that fixture, say, moved to Antarctica or dissolved into quarks and protons, no one would lament its passing save for the procurement of a replacement. A matter of course! Something else to neglect with ignorance, bruise with self-importance. We (the rest of the sensate world) suggest a puppy.

But even a puppy will whine in discontent, bark in anger. Those unfeeling, unseemly lashing-outs and bouts of muffled silence evidently raise no such flags. Since when did visible unhappiness equate normalcy? Since when did mordant remarks indicate a genuine bad nature, a natural ill-temper, a harmless, prolonged despondency? One might laugh thoughtlessly at the silly, silly child with the dark eyes and concealed kitchen cleaver, and suppose the thing an unappreciative, ungrateful dunce. Congratulations, then. Top marks! The dunce will now take her bow. In the meantime I marvel at and curse you all.