It wasn’t that Patrick couldn’t make his delivery today, it was just that he couldn’t bring himself to. Like a tired love affair, this contrivance had run its course, it’s fuel all dried up—there would be no delivery today. He didn’t think how much all these bowling balls cost, or how he might pay the rent, but he was a little concerned he might be disrupting marine life below the pier—not enough to stop dropping them, though. He sat on the worn wooden planks on the edge of the pier, dropping polished bowling balls into the Pacific like bombs between his dangling legs, an expression of untroubled neutrality on his face.

Patrick was a poet, and by many accounts a bad one. He supplemented his income by moving trucks full of bowling balls across town, from the shipping yard to the three bowling alleys of the town. It was an ordinary job meant for ordinary people, and most people in the town saw him as ordinary. Patrick didn’t see himself this way, though. His poems were seen as obvious; he was often told that he was trying too hard, and that poems should rhyme. They were skimmed by his instructors and reported to be missing a certain depth, the kind they were used to seeing prima facie, on the surface. But Patrick Mesmer believed in an honest, lived depth—one that couldn’t be cobbled together linguistically—it had to be felt.

The air was cool and the sun was hot and it was an all-around perfect day for a young man to lose his job. Patrick had never liked bowling much anyways and besides, this might make a great poem. With his foot, he nudged open the door of his mind and sensed a swirl of possible worlds: poems all written out for him to choose from. Grabbing one at random, the words took shape.

Bowling balls drop heavy into water.

Can’t know if they ever will return.

Look, there goes one more!

I can breathe again.

A full moon.

Respite.

The bus-ride home was long, and eventful.

Several of the passengers had interesting smells, some pleasant some otherwise. It made Patrick realize why so many people often refused to take the bus: fear of unknown smells.

A few moments later, a well dressed man with slicked back hair stood up abruptly from his seat and began reciting verses from a tiny pocket-sized Bible.

“We are gathered here today under the Lord, our God, and we testify to him!” he said. His flock was tired and unresponsive and he became increasingly agitated with every Amen! and Praise the Lord! that went unsaid. Patrick was sitting close to him, absorbed in a very good book up until then, and there was something that made him feel that he was being called to respond to help this poor man in some way. Just as this crazed man had begun his sermon—the very instant—Patrick had read the word “Bible” in a sentence from his novel, a word that had not appeared once in the pages prior—this was not a coincidence. But, what to do with this information? Was it a wink from the Universe? From God? From angels just saying hello? Were they attempting a call to action to a receptive soul—Patrick?

“Why am I not Jesus and why are we all not Jesus?” the man said. “This is today, the day we are all here, and we pray together. I am not a fool! You see me! I am not a fool!”

Perhaps this man needed help. Patrick watched as the man’s recitations spiraled out of control into a religious diatribe in two languages, neither of which Pat could understand. The signs were undeniable that he should help—the man was clearly distressed. He was discoursing now on the unfairness of a society that made him dress in a way that was unfamiliar to him, with a suit and a tie. Who knew? Patrick thought it was fun to dress nicely because it made people respect you. What’s not to like? But this man clearly felt forced, like a puppet; he was disgraced.

“I am the way of The Father, Jesus Christos. You make me dress this way? You make me dress this way?” he shouted, aggressively.

Patrick was up a few feet in a raised area of the bus, and the man’s shoulder was in easy reach. He couldn’t decide: should I touch him? Should I not? What will happen if I do—if I don’t?

He made the decision to grasp the man’s shoulder in the most tender and friendly way possible, hoping to be of some service to the man’s feelings. The religious man spun around so quickly, grabbing Pat’s hand with such force that Patrick feared his good graces might not be perceived with the gentle benevolence he’d intended. But, when the man saw Patrick’s face he paused and softened, gazing into him, assessing his virtues, and once cleared of malice he held Patrick’s hand fervently, their fingers meshed awkwardly in unfamiliar sweat. A poem came.

I’d felt his hands not once before.

The man on the bus.

We met today.

Something is shared now—

Something I didn’t want.

Now he was holding Patrick’s hand, shaking his own head back and forth and speaking in a feverish tone that obscured every word from comprehension. Pat was on the defensive and engaging in a kind of free-form caricature of recognition, jumping between different facial tics, nods and squints and smiles, trying to match at least the rhythm of the man’s emotions, if not the content.

As the bus came to a halt to let on more passengers, Patrick saw his chance to escape. He feigned an uncomfortable urgency at his new bus partner, pointing at the door with his eyes and hand, the reader in him remembering to bookmark the page he was on and mumbling some vague incoherences that he hoped might allow him to be excused and to slip away unscathed.

“I have to go!” Pat said.

The man was still talking to him with the same quasi-esoteric theistic garbling, completely oblivious to any and all non-religious language and behavior. If you weren’t talking about God then to this preacher you might as well not even exist.

Just as the door of the bus closed, preventing Patrick’s escape, the man finally released his hand in order to properly demonstrate the size and scope of God’s kingdom (it was big).

The bus continued to roll, undaunted.

Patrick was standing up awkwardly next to him, the bus nearly full and everyone else seated. Half the passengers just stared at them with hard lips and wide eyes. The other half appeared to be trying their very best to convince themselves of a reality in which this wasn’t happening. Judging from their expressions, it was going well.

The zealot wrapped an arm tightly around Patrick and held onto him close. He must have been thinking he’d gained an accomplice and that it was now a two man show, this angry sermon. Clearly the man did not expect Patrick to speak, but just to stand with him in a silent brotherly bond: a support role. And he didn’t—Patrick didn’t dare speak. He glanced down to see if the man was carrying any kind of suitcase that might contain explosives.

He was.

This was getting serious. Patrick looked around nervously at all the sad people in their seats, trying to communicate to them facially that he was not in any way associated with this man and that he was just as worried about him as they were. He suddenly couldn’t help imagining the man taking a small mobile phone out of his pocket and detonating a bomb.

Fire and death;

Windows crash.

We weep as we should, but

There is an odd desire to smile.

I can’t breathe.

Patrick thought about the last few years of his life: High School—a wash of antisocial tendencies and missed opportunities. Being too afraid to use the urinals next to football players. Teachers losing their temper in class, shouting. Students driving nicer cars than the faculty. French fries and pizza for lunch, every day. Cute girls, always impossible to talk to. Skipping school to take drugs and getting caught. Poems, acne.

Now the man seemed to be approaching some sort of climax, judging from his voice’s volume and tempo. He reached gravely into the bag he carried and everyone postponed the beating of their hearts until further notice. Patrick closed his eyes and said, oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck into the black space behind his eyes.

With our final breath we sleep,

And awake to what’s true.

The bus came to a halt.

“Last stop. The is the last stop on this line, please…please get off the bus.” The driver’s nonchalance lessened the tension in the back of the bus, but only falsely. He clearly didn’t know or didn’t care about what was going on back there. All hearts remained still as the lunatic’s hand emerged from the bag with a pair of sunglasses—he placed them on his head and walked off of the bus, his worried flock of sinners trailing behind him. He looked at Patrick and smiled.

“How are ya, man?” he said. His voice had completed changed.

“…” Patrick didn’t know what to say. The man’s voice was no longer foreign. Was this all an act? The man laughed deeply, bowing his head before turning to walk away.

Honesty defined by opposites.

Relations become themselves when turned.

I played your game for free.

If Patrick was ever concerned about having quit today, well, he was even less concerned now. His apparently narrow escape from the radical Christian zealot had given birth to a gentle stillness, and Patrick could feel his entire body vibrating finely like a tuning fork. His eyes relaxed into accepting ovals as he sauntered home, his body letting go of all tension, allowing his mind to open to the promise of a new life.