It’s a Wednesday I think, and I’m going home high. It just passed 10:15 in the morning, my alarm reminds me – been up since I heard kitchen noises at 9:46. (I didn’t forget about the alarm – I knew it’d go off, marking forty-five sweet minutes left in the breakfast hour before James – I call him “Camper” – picks me up. Still blazed from last-night antics, he and I plan to shop uptown a bit, just for a while. Maybe I’ll buy some flannel or a grinder; Camper doesn’t know really what he wants, but I need to buy a special edition record for Nina. Otherwise…bad. So since I’m going home, packing happens, panic happens, I shave.

Dark clouds scattered across the blanket blue and burst as we passed beneath them. The wipers smeared the bleak landscape across the windshield.

The effect is spoiled by his feet, which are turned awkwardly inward. They are innocent and tragic, those feet.

And to those who

are convicts

Of thought

And prisoners of

Words,

Think not with your minds but Through caged

Birds-

And it’s not like these tree branches are anything

more than a hundred swinging arms,

humming May’s lulling noontime melody.

“I’m from the future,” she had told him, swiping at strawberry-blonde bangs. She grinned and her eyes darted downward. She wore a silver sweater that day; it went well with her handmade tinfoil helmet.

But every time he thought she was about to read it, his mother’s penguin head would swivel left or swivel right. Her penguin eyes would dart up or dart down. Her penguin feet would march here or march there.

the fallen stars of each ideal I’ve
been praying to in place of a God.