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To Send or Not to Send
The click of outrageous fortune.
Like the sweaty-palmed teenager approaching his crush at the school dance, I stood before the mass of possibilities.
Should I again, as I had in my pimpled youth, divert from the orchard of female eyes, and detour to the drinks fountain? Choice, like the slow descent of fingers on a blackboard, seeped into me.
Was this question, shattering and tearing at my conscience, any different than those of the Danish prince? I admit, as for something ‘rotten in the state of Denmark,’ the office waste bin was near to eruption and the coffee-stained table-top yelled of long nights with caffeine induced apparitions. How was one to choose?
With thoughts of arrows being hurled and the likelihood of only ever sniffing the crumbs of outrageous fortune, my finger sprung back from the trigger, the keyboard, that spelled infamy, destiny, or merely ignominy.
To the sides of my head my palms raced, and drove in spirals, hoping to screw sensibility to my temples. A sigh rippled through my chest. It was no different than being cast before the plethora of apples that greeted me daily at the supermarket entrance. I stood paralyzed by the lingering, lonely notes of the Fuji apple’s shamisen, the blaring bravado of the Imperial apple’s rich crimson, coupled with the highland bagpipe whine of the…