I witnessed, was witness to, a man who made a woman feel small and silly for her thoughts, made her to believe her thoughts were small and silly, days on days, on years on years of scoffs, subtle and not so subtle. Mockery. I watched as her belief structures crumbled, and with them her abilities. She was a creature of the night, after he went to bed, when her wit and cleverness and detail retention could blossom. Come morning, she returned to her frazzled, fumbled state. Interesting. I’ve witnessed, have been witness to, another man, who in a different but same way makes another woman feel small and silly for her ideas, her method of organizing, her flow of being. She has learned to think the same thing that he thinks, which is, that her state is disorganized and his is methodical, organized. Interesting. D-d-d-d-damn it. I’ve witnessed, have been witness to, yet another man, who in a different but same way, makes another woman feel small and silly for her ideas. She has spunk, and plays her cards right back. But over time, what happens? What will happen? I see all these things, and I take note. Man number 1 threatens with his tone to diminish my own thoughts. I stare at him, unfazed, and he steps down. Man number 2 hints at a “non sequitur” in my thoughts, an “irrelevance” of one in reference to the “previous” one, a scattered thought process. I ask him for the Latin roots of non sequitur, and also whose irrelevance, and what if he just can’t see the lines. Are you really revealing to a black widow your weakness that you can’t follow the threads of her web? Be my guest, come deeper, stay a while. Why don’t you tell me how silly and scattered they all are, tell me about how you haven’t learned to ask, in a pursuit of understanding, “what linked those things in your head? How did you build that connection, what are you seeing that I’m not?” Tell me how it feels, when you step off your groomed path and can’t manage the tangles so you lash out and get stuck even more. Tell me, and while I listen I’ll keep slinging silk, coding in all that you’re telling me while also thinking my own thoughts and considering what it is to listen in the first place and who am I and who are you and what from your history led you to the position you’re in now, a position defined by coordinates we have yet to discover, and what is it we’re forming now as we speak and what’s the lady next to you thinking and is it time to stop talking to you at all because now you’re too interested in me and though you’ve failed to realize it the lady next to you is tensing up and moving away and I feel the coldness of her shoulder and I’m wrapping up our conversation and moving on because I have no interest in being between the two of you and still you don’t seem to realize but sure, my thoughts are scattered, and it’s a wicked wonderful web they weave.