Consequence

Did I know, three years ago, when I first brushed an arm, the butterfly chain of events I had triggered? 1

The weight of consequence astounds me. Some days I can f* a stranger and the event is only followed by after, preceded by the sameness of before. Yet that one touch pushed reality an inch to the side for me. It precipitated lies, horrors, madness, disgust, desertion, poverty, loss, fullness of spirit and emptiness of soul. It triggered a series of shifts from which I will not recover, and is only now ending. 2

I've never yet regretted a mistake you know. Who am I to disallow the terrors of the world? I've only ever regretted stasis; time endured, not lived. But that brush - that promise of transgressive touch - had such rich, jagged consequence for so long, it's hard not to succumb to the self-indulgence of regret. 3

But how could I not have known? How could there not have been omens of a world about to axis? I will not again have place in the skin of the woman who was so ready for that smooth contact, transgressive allowance of something different - will not ever again. Have learnt so damn much of myself while enduring the consequence that I pity her - the unknowing, the ignorance of the cold, breaking terrors of life. 4

Did I wake to white cotton that morning and know that the day was different? Did I pour a scalding bitter coffee and feel shadows of foreknowledge that my world was readying itself to end? And when I brushed soft, warm, tense skin, did I know how long, how terrifyingly that moment would echo? 5

How many other redolent, earth shifting moments of great consequence do we live blithely through in a day?6