The Ear

 

 

Everybody has one.

One small custom-coloured bit of fake flesh. Completely accurate, I’m told.

………….Their auditory ossicles thrummingly gulp sound, and a round fat cochlear snail,
………….anatomically—and in design—its base—is the pumping heartbeat of our world, nesting in
………….the sober darknesses of self-lubricating sculptings of human pork.

………….Even the skin is real, they say.

And we keep them in small—again custom-coloured—plastic cases—the kind mass-produced in
Chinese factory cities, with gel-hardened slots that clip—CLIP—together—the kind you store
gum-shields in—and in a sense, they work the same way, too—occlusal splints, but serving the
thinking things we tally up as constituting the real, namely us, ourselves.

But equally what matters is that

………….We matter,

Even in the fullness of our lives,

………….And we talk to them.

………….Everybody does.

Sometimes you’d be at work, and the thoughts—impossible thoughts—they come up, like they
do, and flood your mind so you can’t, so you . . .

………….And, well, you nip out for a moment. You never say why, but everyone knows.
………….We know.

………….We need to talk.
………….Or, rather, we need someone to listen,
………….And that is why the flesh I now hold matters—

………….It matters, because in the silent audience it represents, it assures us:

……………………………….We matter.

Other times, sometimes when happy, others sad, sometimes laughingly full of secrets sweet—
and other secrets, too, wet and hot, an uncanny algal muck—sometimes full of that haunting
disconnect that blesses us with sin—we still need to talk.

…………..And we do.

…………..One small custom-coloured bit of fake flesh.

…………..An ear.

…

…

…

Some people also do more than talk:

………….They stroke them, whispering of kindnesses due, and they create people behind the
………….silence.

………….They render their secret listeners in equally secret flesh.

………….They know, their audience guaranteed on purchase,
………….Someone, somewhere,
………….Is listening.

Some people even have them made furry, so they can stroke them.

…………My beloved dog, you hear me in the void, and you cannot answer, but it is enough that
…………you know me. It is enough.

And, some people even fall in love.

 

 

For me, it’s different,
My beloved dog,
I listen, too.

And everybody has one.

……………………………….One small custom-coloured bit of fake flesh.

I have one.

…………………………………………………………………BECAUSE I KNOW WE MATTER,
………………………………………….YOU AND I, BUT ONLY IN CONCERT,
………………….WE MATTER, AND WITHOUT YOU, I DO NOT,
MATTER, SO I NEED YOU, TO MATTER.

And everybody has one,
We know we are heard.
We’ve seen the videos.

Tall poplar trees outside service centres, two-to-three in each continent—

Delhi, Dublin, Paris, Boulder, Colorado; Mexico City too—

…

…

And the tall poplar trees stand like guardians outside the centres, so their vast arboreal breaths
can echo the silence of those of us who work inside, past the night-and-day watchmen, who keep
us safe, like we keep you safe—we who cradle even the smallest of your dreams.

And inside, more often than not, I see Frank, the auld fellah at the front desk, big grey mutton
chop and all, and he nods me in, after patting me down, of course.

…

.

We all know the script.

But, even so, we have our own tempers to wrestle with, too.

I like to imagine the tall trees outside tremble when we hear licentiousness, and that they laugh
when we hear laughter.

But mostly, it’s what you might imagine, and what you’ve likely seen, in the advertisements.

…………They don’t run them so much now.
…………They don’t need to.

My study —we call our offices studies—is like the rest: an eight-by-eight room, a green
Chesterfield in the corner, a stack of blankets on a small shelf above it, black-padded walls,
an old straight-backed mahogany chair tucked in under a green roll-top desk, and a small coffee
machine and water cooler in the corner, on a green table.

There’s a matching green coffee table near the Chesterfield, too.

I forget things sometimes.

It helps in this line of work.

.

.

We work in shifts. Four hours apiece.

They tried longer shifts first, but it didn’t work.

The human mind just isn’t geared to tolerate knowing so much about people we can never meet.
It’s not geared to share suffering without being able to reach out and touch kin. We’re not built
to be silent adepts, ghostly members of a tribe who can never know whose abortive dreams
and whose great triumphs we share.

The pay is good, though. It has to be.

We keep secrets—everyone’s. We even know each other’s, and we know that we all play
guessing games, trying to figure out if any of our companions are famous, or if we work with
them, side-by-side.

………..You know, I think it’s Frank’s son who terrifies him—Frank moved in with his son after
………..his wife died, he told me, in the flesh—I think he comes home drunk in a lather, and . . .

……….Does it explain the deep lines that made his skin a map?

The non-disclosure agreements are onerous, mind you. They have to be. We are masters, to a
woman, and to a man, but we will never know over whom our silence exerts the heaviest,
headiest, hungriest pull.

………..Our mastery, as it needs to be, is, fittingly, mute.

It all started a decade ago. You remember.

I know you do.

A young man and a young woman, one a philosophy graduate, the other an engineer, realized
that what we needed most was assurance, forever, that we are heard.

…………..So they built them.

At first, people laughed.

…………Oh, you’re not possibly . . .
…………You couldn’t have . . .

Then, they became a novelty at parties.

Groups talked to them. Told them secrets. People even proposed near them, but secret proposals,
promises guaranteed by listeners, like me, who could never act.

…………..But we hear the airing of the banns.

……………………..I promise you I will . . .

…………………………………I promise you I will not . . .

Then we all had them.

…………One small custom-coloured bit of fake flesh. Completely accurate, I’m told. Auditory
…………ossicles thrummingly gulping sound, and a round fat cochlear snail, anatomically—and in
…………design—the base—the pumping heartbeat of our world, nesting in the sober darknesses
…………of self-lubricating sculptings of human pork.

But it never worries me that I don’t know
…………who I tell my secrets to.

The process works.

………….I like it.

It even made it easier to love, at first, until the jealousy began to bite, until silence made us even
more dependent, and even more alone.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this.

Maybe we even work together.

Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow morning.

But I want you to know that I matter.
You matter.
We matter, together.

And I know you listen,
But do you like me?

 

Sometimes I draw my study in black and white.
Sometimes I imagine you in it, with me.

.

 

Sometimes I imagine it empty.

 

 

Sometimes I imagine it empty, except for you.

 

.

I wish I could kiss you.

 

____

Irish poet, academic, and journalist, Oisín Breen,a Best of the Net nominee, is published in 103 journals in 20 countries, including About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, The Tahoma Literary Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Decomp, New Critique, and Reservoir Road. Breen’s second collection, Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín has just been released by Beir Bua Press. It follows his well received debut, “Flowers, all sorts, in Blossom …” (Dreich, 2020).