The Hermit on the Thoroughfare

In this room of living affectionate appliances mingle with the hermit her mortal pelvis vibrates from the deafening impacts of 16 wheeled vehicles hurled into potholes on their quest to deliver nourishment to Midcoast brethren. Those brethren will push their carts, solo gathering and hunting in Shaws’ aisles not realizing the way their food has related, palpated the hermit’s abdomen as intimately as a uterus full of secret fetus: kicking, tickling, flickering, hinting of mortal company to come. But company won’t come to the hermit. She interacts only with her cubed trinity: a silver box speaks her language with a digital accent a black box radiates sustenance to sterile enzymelessness a white box preserves frigidity. Her front door opens onto two feet of littered sidewalk and, just beyond, Route 1 stares. Concourse to thousands of Mainers and tourists who donate soot stains to her siding like Passover blood, and gritty black dust that creeps through the cracks onto the baseboards of her living room. Their soot will engage the hermit, but the living will never visit.