Upon reflection ...

McBeth.

It was while crying over spilt grounds (not milk like those simple-minded sissies) grounds, no, a whole different spilt mess altogether, that Bob Marley came to me as an audiocast vision.

Bob squatted to my right, wrapping my shoulders with his long arms, humming something I couldn't hear. My own baleful sobs were preventing me from hearing what he was singing to me but he continued humming, holding me, rocking me, gently pulling me into his left side.



'YOU'RE A GODDAMNED MAKE-BELIEVE NON- HALLUCINATORY MOTHERFUCKING HALLUCINATED EXPERIENCE! GO AWAY! FUCK OFF!', I rasped at him. He hummed back. Few things are more annoying than telling someone to leave you alone and have the venom sucked off, cast aside, ignored. Few things are as difficult... as kind a gesture to receive, for with the venom acknowledged all you're left with is what really was there to begin with, the stuff hiding underneath, the stuff buried to prevent revelation.



I mopped my face between swipes at the floor, the walls, the appliances. Stupid stupid stupid. But... but... but... how could I possibly have foreseen the garbage can trajectories? And that moment of question - the millisecond I had a counter-stupid doubt - that's when Three Little Birds fluttered in. That's what Bob was humming to me in the background, and only when my own noise quieted I could hear Bob, I could hear what he was trying to tell me in his reassurance, in his relaxed embrace.



Every little thing is gonna be alright