doors

seven is the lucky number.

eight, the remains of familiarity.

Nine is two fores in one. 

Nine carries two holes, two flags, two embedded picks, surrounded by red Georgian soil.
Nine holds four white orbs thumping to stillness in their sculpted holes, slipping in and out of focus with the sunlit leaves and their darkness.

Nine grips to my memory with its raw tendrils, slick and sticky, pocked with the writhed-in rocks and life's too-prevalent scent.
Nine pushes from the feet, expels its content up, up, up for the gawking world to witness.

Nine is where KO began, where KO and I joined as one, where KO will cease.
Nine remains, even after Shon was swallowed by the soft-stone that clasped together with awful haste, even after Priss' laughter sundered the world.

my world.

our world.

its end started with a puzzle like my own.

you see, this sieve let the nuggets slip. fulfilled its duty to mean nothing, though it said much. the jutting outlines of my thoughts scribbled down, copied over, bottled up, chucked seaward, built to snag corneas with their luster. polish a rock enough and you'll sell it for more than fifty year's toil, more than the star-bound mass of adult and child evaporating in existence (i know from experience). a sacrifice as necessary as any other; we all aren't entitled to dream houses (again, i know from experience). so now that the attention's secured, the audience will rally in awe of the sparkles and come to know the powders behind them, what grime sticks on faces, constricts windpipes, lockjaws mashers (i'm sure you know i know from experience). that's not to say this blog enterprise is wholly non-sequitur. we'll return to it later. but since KO lies dormant and vacation days linger, my chance to extrapolate on these provided clues presently presents itself.

what is KO? what drives its repetition? what brought me to The Coca-Cola Company's doorstep?

We must take three three-steps back to pinpoint where each of those questions' answers lies. slide back the first set paces - un, dos, tres, out from solid, adhesive umbra into Nine's center courtyard.

observe Nine's mighty protector, a bark behemoth born to earth's embrace by the weight of its roots. they slink in the clumpy soil, take more than their fill demands, demand constant filling. you can see it in the leaf colors: startling crimson, popped against blank white, supporting a navy sky.

al Bino, the south's white pillar. a trifecta of american shades holding up Nine's bloated brown dirt. literal testament to KO-given miracles (at the time, I thought God did all; now I know better!).

its presence pumped the fleshy foreign blood that kept Nine panting, sent the verdant dough to the grounds-keepers dedicated to delayed renovation, preferably mother earth's. green for green, bark back to bark (in a circuitous way): so the forest encroached.

fools fail to preserve their environment.

but they only hastened Nine's last ten days.

its puzzles got us all.


tomorrow we'll step again.
six, five, four.