the flood/coming undone
it’s that ancient love
that you won’t outgrow
the walls are singing, and that was before susie handed me a little yellow pill with a grin. i’d already snuck through all the rooms in that house, curious, even checking the medicine cabinet, but someone either thought ahead or beat me to it. empty.
i moved around, shimmying past the awkward looking clusters, the high-traffic areas. dark blue lights lined the pool deck, and i found some people i knew, looking like aliens sprawled five deep across a lawn chair. camille, always listening, always smiling at the little mannerisms, people’s tics and quirks, she was there, perched on the edge of the blue plastic seat, facing away. a stare at the concrete, small private smile. she must be coming up. yes, she’s definitely feeling it.
imagine piles of powders the color of pixie-sticks you can put up your nose or use to dye your skin. both would give your brain that fizzy feeling, like super-carbonated soda straight to the frontal lobe. it looked like some exotic spice market. a small purple girl with dreadlocks parted from a boy with a multicolored face, spun around me, and rejoined him. off they went, i’m sure, to go fly off the planet.
i start dancing, slowly, bobbing along as i wander around, and i’m starting to feel weightless. there’s some kids passionately reinventing physics over by the edge of the roof.
“if we all dance, we can get the earth spinning so fast that we’ll all fly.”
“but we’ll die.”
“but we’ll burn up in the atmosphere.”
“but we’ll get to fly. how else would you rather die?”
susie is on top of a table, twirling, feeling the slow rotation of the planet or some such revelatory vibration. the blue lights along the pool seem to be pulsing. maybe that’s just the music mixing with the brainwaves.
a guy named chris flashes by me, and does a swan dive into the pool. a cheer went up, and about half the people shed their clothes and followed him. the chlorine mixed with the powders, bled off the skin, bonded and began to glow, a mixed drink of glowing turquoise, reds and oranges. each color you swim through feels a little different.
