Shears

He puts his gloves on, exactly three times. Steps out. It's the morning. Dew on the lawn.

A heavy old pair of shears in his hands. Time to do some clipping.

The bushes have grown in to all sorts of strange shapes. Lumps. Straggly branches reaching out. A tangled mess.

He sets to work. One at a time, each branch drops. He steps around each bush in a tight little circle. Snipping.

The sound of the little snips in the morning air. Otherwise quiet morning.

Eventually many branches have dropped off. All the irregularities in the bushes erased.

Why does he do this? Why turn a large, lumpy, natural bush in to a perfectly round one?

Inside, he turns on the television. Two seconds of world news about global corruption, greed, and mass puppy murder.

He shuts the news off and sits down with his head in his hands, repeating to himself, everything is okay. This is okay. The world is okay. My life is okay. It's great. Everything's great. All the time. Always. He thumps his head on the table, breathing heavily, next to his bowl of cereal.

Control is a concept human beings invented because it made them feel nice.

He paces back and forth.

If he could clip every little branch that started to jut out. If he could obliterate every unwelcome idea or thought before it started to grow. If he could maintain that perfectly round shape he envisioned.

He threw the bowl of cereal across the room. A scream.

How long before our shears all rust and we must face the tangle?

Outside, countless dead branches are sitting in a pile, already beginning to decay. Soon, they will become soil, to support the growth of a new generation of plants that will never be perfectly round.