We want your warm love and mistake your internal temperature for it. But because it’s where we came from does not mean it’s where we’ll find love again. This intimacy skips generations in that way. Lateral love is valuation, not eternal warmth, like vertical love. It saves that truest, dying love for what descends from it, not for the filler of the void in its midst. The son is sacred, the lover -even though it be the son’s fate too- is on the exchange, an open market where careful trades are made and bets placed. We sons are confounded; first love with the holiest vertical adoration, and then castigated leftward, in a line, next, next, hurry along now. Do your job, squares here, circles there, lines in the middle, we’re sorry but we’re going to have to let you go this week. Build confidence upon that basis, dear, and see how it goes for you. Quicksand, though, sinks your feet too, and every bit as obviously as our fancy cars rust, your leather cracks and your lack of innocence beams through each of the crows toes. It is a wicked game we play, and life and our lively drives betray us. Our only recompense, grace. And we forget that in all of our deceitful knowing of facts and figures, in our striving and our putting on foundation or in our pretending like we’ve built one. A wicked game so wearisome that god made amends with the orgasm, a death moment, in preview of our reward for endurance against grey entropy. And swaying trees to make us fall in love under, and us as the nutrients to their roots.