source: "Sow" by @ankapolo
The colloquial "they" called him "Sow" which is at once accurate and entirely misleading. He was indeed a large man, but much like the tusks of a boar make whatever aesthetically unpleasing underbelly undulating behind those two sharpened points entirely irrelevant Sow's similarly sharpened two-point gaze and broad shoulder's made the trivia of whether his stomach stayed steady above the belt or protruded over utterly beside the point.
There was a conversation taking place, and he participating, but on auto-pilot, picking responses from a mental rolodex of statements he instinctually knew by muscle memory, muscle in question being the tongue and those in his face he learned that if he flexes them - like so - he recieved similar contractions from the targetted faces, statements served with same practiced serve with content as hollow as a tennis ball and the reciever confirms the rally, absorbing nothing and returning such.
He thought there'd be a moment, or an intermission, or some final decision but that's not how it works, how it works is you work because you have to it's what people do and you keep working and your good work gets you more (actually less) work and you wake up and look in the mirror and while not revolted or jumping back in disgust you rather feel a dissociated dull acceptence, not recognizing the visage in the mirror but I mean it will do and carry on to do what people do and that's work.
Is there an official time or age a man becomes less the man and more the job, what was once something he did at some point becomes your defining trait, your type, mold, label this is my father and immediatley come's "He's a(n)", your name not enough but needing a body to your given name's header, serving only to distinguish you in microcosm and holding no personality left in the letters and mouthed two three syllables may as well be serial number in two or three symbols but really all these words in his head he really means: he's bored.
Which of course is the most boring emotion a man of his age could experience, stock emotion for a stock position in the middle aged man's stock narrative, though that would soon prove to be not the case at the moment it was.
The thing with Sow is that one morning I guess he might've been hypoglycemic, it runs in the family, the thing with Sow was one morning Sow looked in the same mirror and felt the same dulled dissociation and he decided he was going to change. The decision was made coldly over breakfast, final conviction sealed as the crusts hit the side of the garbage can and Sow put on his suit (He wore a suit at his job. It was a suit job.) and went into work. At work he quit work. Then he left work.
Then he bought a horse. Still had the suit on. He looked at his horse. The eye's to be precise. From straight on the horses hot breathed head reminded one of a nervous fish, I'm sure at different angles there's majesty and virtue in those eyes but as those two eyes looking like 12 and 4 he saw nothing but the dumbfounded, hapless idiocy of life and Sow smiled and he didn't even have to use the muscles in his face on purpose and he felt the divine absurdity of existence and shared a moment of seeming perpetual fright and suprise with the dumb horse and his smile started to shake and sound came out and Sow was laughing I think and that laugh is when Sow became the man we know as Sow God help us.
This is a continued project-thing between @ankapolo and I where she sends me visuals to write to or I send her text to draw to, primary difference being she's gracious enough to send back something relevant to the text whereas I have a bad habit of using everything as a springboard to jump into self-mastubatory psuedo-existential silliness (including springs, boards, springboards, (meta) masturbation, masturbation, and the word "self": anyway- she made that pic up there! Be sure to check out her page as she's a very talented artist, sure to elicit more than few "oh cools" (triple digits easily) when browsing her portfolio.
