The Variable
For Sherlock and John
The world reveals itself
In signs, patterns, marks on a sidewalk.
He sees it all
An ever evolving, overwhelming sensory experience.
The passing thought of a stranger,
In the twitch of an eye.
The failure of a marriage,
In the hem of a dress.
He sees it all
And it bores him
So predictable, so mundane.
He works
To block out the noise, the ever calculable
Day to day existence.
Unraveling the mind of a killer
From a drop of blood, a shard of glass.
Yet still he knows all that's coming
The deductive reasoning
That explains the finite and the infinite
Of all he sees.
Until one day it does not.
One day a man comes
Just an ordinary man.
He can read the man's life
In the lines of his face,
The scratches on his phone
He cannot read him
The man is a blind spot
In his world of signs, patterns, and marks
An unpredicted variable.
Unpredictable.
He can understand his reasoning,
The logic of his fascination.
This man is a riddle yet unsolved
A puzzle which must be finished
That is what he tells himself.
His interest lies only in that
The man is not mundane, not calculable
Nothing more
Because for all his signs, patterns, and marks
For all he sees
He is blind.