So I told him he is a bear. A grizzly bear. A chimpanzee. A moment metamorphosing into a memory. The mark on the wall. The you have made me happy but you still cannot save me. And he cried. Like confused urban rain in summer. Then he laughed. Like the waves hitting the rocks on the shore. A hearty laugh. A full laugh. A quietude which screamed. A very big toe and beautiful hands. Two tufts of hair sticking out awkwardly from the top of the temples.
He crouched in a corner under the bookshelf. You will get a bump on your head, I said. He did not move. Put his arms around his knees. And then he said he was old, old and dying. Old but full of wonder. Wonder which was always stumbling into befuddlement. The wonder of a chimpanzee still adapting to human ways - unable to distinguish between glass and air. Hurting a nose he loves. Learning, still, to open a door.
He sleeps under the stars and speaks poetry like a rhapsode. In the nightmares, they will break him. Turn him into a minotaur. But he will still crouch under the bookshelf. That is what minotaurs do when they fall in love.
