Manny the Microscope Man

Manny thought the microscope is a way of stopping time. Time is irrelevant, he thought, inside that tube. It's as if time doesn't bother with things that small. When you travel through the microscope you slip away from time into silence and rest. A new inventory of mysteries situates calmly for your eyes. There is no sound, no impact, no danger, just your mind. He laughed as he thought of it. He smiled inwardly.

He saw eternity through that lens, including the buried, unhappy earth, away from the sun, separated from whatever is regenerate and warm. Unearthly markings on a moist earth toned shell are, surprisingly, also from the earth.

It could also be a return to something simple, a world of closed loops where kinks and corners weren't invented, where animals mixed and organelles slipped through each other, eating inside each other within impossible rooms of gelatin.

Out here, Manny thought, we hold the line cold and fast. We lock and crimp sharp.The circle is only an ideal we can't match. The thought came up from the great tube of body and brain.

And Manny wanted to make vows. Promises gave bones to his ameboid nature, froze him into a shape. Kept time from spreading him. He could imagine leaning back into someone he could trust, someone loyal. He would vow first, pledge allegiance, the assume it would forever be the same and equal, a stasis. Days would pass and pass, morning first judgements, afternoon fulfillments, evening muddled driftings and slow, graceful nights.

Manny took a walk. He was settled in a cul-de-sac of trees. Birds were like small novelties, flickering in and out of his vision. But their singing was always there at least in the distance. As the sun slipped into its orange-yellow phase, colors enriched. He bathed in the place he was, in his body filling in details, drawing conclusions, projecting a meaningful image to his eyes.

How cold it would be when sunlight devolved into its true meaningless nature. The birds around saw sunlight so differently from Manny. The insects who chomped on each other and grew babies inside each other, the parasites with their unimaginable lives, the small things who spent lives in rock cracks and on bubbling fissures under the sea, found their loves there ate their dinners not on tiny dining room tables or unimaginable restaurants in cold and heat without bathing suits or winter coats. Why did they live those lives? Why did Manny live his?

Everything was in colonies, even the rocks. Cousins and siblings clung together in small fortresses with tiny walls around them. It wasn't for safety. It was to maintain reality which depended so much on consensus. He could almost hear the small voices calling each other, “Are you there? Am I not alone?”

Manny trudged through the forest on the border between his and theirs.
Marian slept late today. She was dreaming about heaven situated at a beach resort where it never gets cold. She woke to an empty house.

“Are you there? Manny, are you home?” She called.
There was no answer.