We began the word at least a thousand years ago, although it might have been longer. Mostly to do with fire. Very dismal, that period of time before, without combustion, without a resting point. We boiled our water via forceful telepathy.

She asked me how I expressed myself and I attempted to make love via distanced hate. What, you might ask, does that look like?, and here's how it went down: I disliked everything about her, especially the way she pretended to be less than she was. It wasn't humility, it was masked hubris. Thinking herself the beat, the dance, the motions we made when we had hunted and slit blood, she still skinnied our reflections by fluttering her hands about her face: Not a fair drama to see when you've spent hours stalking stabbing maybe shedding over the spill of a vibrance much larger than any reasonable aspiration. Nor a fair drama for her, who did what needed to be scraped in between. Just not a fair eye-to-.

I pretended to not even notice her, more as punishment of self than repudiation of her, although I have to admit I made sure for her to notice the latter always over the former. When she fluttered and said, "oh, Bye you," I imagined the sound of brick against grey and the monolithic deconstruction of a particular home. Senior citizens turned out and not placed anywhere else. Friezes de-pieced, piece by stone. Someone sick in the alley reliving an entire sequence of events that led to that moment next to dumpsters and discarded couches. "oh, Yeah bye," I made sure to say when I most wanted to make her realize how much I saw her through. And me too, which is why I look downwards always.

Such punishment. My bones ached all the time, like marrow had an ethical course it wove between the confessional of my:

All I wanted was to gather, so innocent, less so since what I wanted to gather was every selfish object refracting its own surface.

Those I esteemed thought her egocentric, and so I had to go along. But even though I agreed, I couldn't argue with her cuddliness. That's what it came down to: how fucking cuddly she seemed, and she would have hated me if she had known how this was the most I ever found:

But someone, fake-vapid or not, who I can see myself wrapped around is nothing to blink at. Nothing to flutter my eyes at. Blink. Nothing more. Or less. It felt like the only thing I could imagine my body at, as if everything involved with the infinitesimal meetings of my actions by reactions, and stillness, time by momentby (hunting, blood-spilling, skinning, carrying, long long deep walks in the midst of a language that lacked terminology for --), had nothing to do with what my skin lunged.

Our iPods, during this time, were slightly less developed, and even though I wanted to listen to music as I slayed mammoths with a long spear I had especially honed to the task of thrustKill, I had to accept the limitations brought on by the fourth dimension. The way I reconciled it was: make sound wherever and who walks.

It came to me one day. The word. I was the one who made it up: go ahead and look to me on this one, although many people (well, by "people" I mean even less-developed-than-me Neanderthals, folks who I felt guilty about putting in the Dumbeddown category, but who still thought that, well, stupid, unDarwined, provincial when you think about it: rocks smacked against rocks make powder-rocks. shit, I wanted to tell them--go out and kill something and no doubt your intellect will shoot. shit, I think they might tell me--go and shove it up your self-definitionally refinedhind-end, you donkey horse ass unicorn thing we accept even if the act isn't reciprocated. and hell, if that doesn't give one something to think about, and, as part of the word, I do) thought that thing before. It was still me who came up with the actual term (ME).

Because how utterly thankful I am to have seen both fire and the sight of a lion licking his mate in the middle of a dark night with only the two of them, plus me seeing under and within their topo, and the rest of life shuttling around us all. The rasp of their tongues might be enough. Enough is the translation of the word I made. I made.

Though. Though I shorthanded it into family. Into the possibly of the skin of a horrible stranger meaning. Into people looking you in the eye, and telling you to call them by names like Jazz like strange Misunderstood like With Nod. So to upload a tube of Universal O--

into the saber-toothed hide willing to move around your life to her life and his as well. For no reason whatsoever. For no other. Other than, sometimes: we are full of gratitude for having found a life right next to ours breathing and stone and pretensing for the sake of no other reason than a brief diatom flickering under water especially under our touch, purple bright, and then disappeared.

The stopping point I imagine writing is much uglier, which is the word I invented only three seconds after thankful. Or was it three seconds before?

I'll let you let me know.