My Genetic Flaw

Your canal’s very narrow, he says.

Narrow?

Yes, like the Thai tunnel cave divers had to negotiate to get those boys out. Not  much sound can get through. There are no cave divers small enough to help it along.

Like that film in the sixties? I say.

Which film is that?

‘Fantastic Voyage’, where a submarine crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of a scientist to repair his brain.

Can’t help you there, he says.

Is it hereditary then?

Quite possible. The left auditory canal is quite large. Can carry a lot of sound.

Maybe that’s why I lean a little to the left, I say.

Politically? he asks.

No, doc. When I walk.

• pic courtesy of Pinterest

Tricky

Not ‘selfish’, she says. more ‘difficult to get on with’.

Ahhh, I say, that’s code for ‘tricky’.

I know I am. My best mate is too.

Human beans are ‘tricky’ all around.

They don’t grow straight. They grow with all sorts

of genetic quirks; there’s always something askew,

that rubs people up the wrong way, that chafes.

How people live together, I don’t know.

Sometimes I have trouble just living with me.

I’m not a one trick pony, but I am tricky.

pic courtesy of Pinterest

Spiral Staircase

My extension cord is kinky.

It winds around itself, gets tangled up in knots.

What can you do?

Iron them out?

I have kinks too.

The world would be a straighter, sadder place were it not

for kinks.

Our quirks, our oddities, the little handbag we carry around our talents in.

How we’re wired, the way we spin, the bands we listen to.

Kinks.

They’re in me and you.

Those pairs of long thin strands coiled like the banisters of a spiral staircase.

Our DNA.

You don’t want to untangle them.

post courtesy of dykeanddean.com on Pinterest