That swirling cape, that city in the clouds. At once both safe and dangerous, double-edge crossed, relief won our simple hearts. In the darkness I sat in awe. Robots scurrying, jetpacks and trumpets. A guise and trick, we were all led into the trap. Alone for the purity, in a matinee respite from the heat and embarrassing glare. A new private kingdom, burping Hungry Jacks and the first layers of regret. Sitting stunned afterwards, traveling far below lightspeed, but soaring in the windows rushing reflection. Unknowing the deception just seen, uncaring of the fiction, transfixed by the impossibility, awakened from a boy's hibernation. Now, suddenly everything familiar was a poorer, bland monotone reality. So...earthbound. Stricken by an impatience, and yet stricken too by a new virus. Beguiling, itchy, craving the wonder, it landed, insinuating that day. A trap of my own making, forever above the clouds, smirking.
“Winter’s coming”, they say, headhung and weary already. It’s a long chill, kept warm by national coffee and the primitive victories of blades over ice, muscle under hide and the stench of desperate youth. Parsing their determination, I could hear the fatalism. “This is what we signed up for”. Gritting, bearing it, clenching down as the knife of a wind cuts a shiver through you. When the air itself is a sting on the cheek, spreading red icicle rashes, everything wise is huddling, conserving, metabolizing survival. Out here the trees groan low in the stillness, their burden of snow more months to carry. The violent stillness, the shocking light, the unforgiving reminder: this is no place for you.
Waiting for the gun, the hiss, the probe. Etching foundations of calcium, scratching away the deterius of everyday consumption. Getting back to natural. Layers of days. Strata of flavors. Onionskins of seated moments, stories and forks, compressing around gums and waists. These are the remnants of our days. The leavenings of our time here. Sloughing it off hurts, but to save the tooth, you sacrifice the history. I am what I ate. Historyful.
The weeds seep up through a crack in the pavers. The wrinkles seep up from an epidermis of years. Darwin gets in, eventually, despite our best facade. The relentless urge for energy and growth overtakes everything manicured and organized. Chaos always wins. We paved over a cracked earth to create a road, then painted lines to tell us where to stay. Be safe said the paint, drive straight said the cats eyes, over here whispered the gravel curb. Lines fade. Suns fall. Chaos always wins. His best laid plans came apart that random Tuesday. A 2:38 phone call stunning him silent. Outside, beyond the double glazing, the hum of life, of futile urgency, or plans and agendas and goals, droned on. The facade even has a soundtrack.
Along with a winnowing desire to do different, he grew quickly staled by the mechanicial repetition of the team in the room. Maybe it was the gray, stained carpet, maybe it was the gray, unstained thinking. Or maybe it was just the numbing ache that there was so much better that was possible. That was the drill to the nerve, really. Nothing of even passing interest would ever be created from this conversation. Most of them already knew it, some of them secretly wished for just that outcome.