Government Nouns: Signature
It is a moist night; the kind that wets dry clothes right out of the shower, perfuming them in unwashed mustiness. Heat slaps like an underpaid whore: "I said - handy five; mouthy ten!" There is always an exchange. Dollars for pesos at an untranslatable ATM, pressing buttons that are meaningful and meaningless at the same time. Mom birds vomiting worm offal into chicks that just protest loudly, stupidly, hungrily, in critique. Snails that exchange the first rain for a short crawl, but stop and due while being fried by the concrete when the sun returns angry. But the best kinds of exchanges come with a 'quid pro quo'; added mundane benefits that should otherwise be free - as harmless, but important but essential as a signature. The weird power of a signature - to build, kill, buy, sell, marry, be born, okay, deny, be dead. Bestow power, strip it away. How does one justify the power of a scribble, scratch, or sometimes ornate and even substituted with a rubber stamp? ...
