The space ship
The metallic toy
The cedar chest
The remote control
The light switch
The mission
The stars
The force
The throttle
The choke
The impact
The landing
The nebula
The attack
The cruiser
The light
The map
The craft
The virus
The warp
The missing
The crew
The bloodshed
The flesh
The arms
The plastic
The head holes
The worm holes
The black holes
The thighs
The hair
The smell
The alpha
The bravo
The tango
This non-metered, non limited space
Possession forces Flora lips to scan fragments of every last dime store novel she ever had touched, a voice smoothing out her inside:
Music warmer, sweeter. Tea is tepid, skin smoother. The sand more separate, sky bluer whe - Stop. The lines of your body. Stop. Wrong. All’s well here. Stop.
In a kitchen, once, as children, you, with me, laughed. Air came out of me. I could see it like it was winter. It lifted off my lips and through past laughter.
Legs wrapped in the ribbons of dirty sheets beached across a small bed, an island in an ocean of sand. I will have, should have been a statue; will have, should have been the moon. FYI, this sky is not company. I should have been a strip of metallic distance stretched between the bruises of dusk and dawn. It is not the sand, nor the heat, not the wind or any combination of these; it is displacement that drives us. Yet always we end up back in the rocking of the great hand, like the silence covered by words.
And at dawn Sorrow rolls over and finds her maker lying next to her in her bed, thieving her sheets; Sorrow, she just smiles, at least he’s here.
And the Desert says to her sweet spine as she rolls over reclaiming the sheets, “The print of your hands, I made them, just wait.”
And Sorrow mumbles, more out of routine than passion, right before drifting back off to welcome slumber, “You know me, just wait, our embrace will pierce your pores and it will be a homecoming.” STOP.
If Flora brush her teeth Flora will keep moving forward. Flora am unsure if Flora want to keep moving. Then comes one word into Flora head. This word replaces Eat and Sorrow and Desert. This word is Destiny; it is sparkly and blue water and breezes and sticky damp palms on the nape of neck. And Flora love porch swings and rooftops in the summer, the swellness of hot. Flora take Destiny by the scruff like a kitten. Flora pull him forward and lean back on sandy air and Flora let Destiny down in her and show Flora who Flora am.
And Destiny say, “Summer is a constant here.”
And Flora say, “I want you to come down this time. I want to do it different. I want you to come down. Come down this time.”
And Destiny say, “Air here is the kind you can drink. Each piece of it is the world in full.”
Flora cry out for the joy. One strand of Flora hair fall over her right eye and move with a tune counter harmony to the rest. Flora don’t care what is left, or where Flora am going. There is a warm flush all around and the scent of well-cultivated tea roses.
And Destiny say, “Here, before, I spoke this very word to you in this very order. You brushed that very hair out of your very eye, placed some bright flower between your teeth, bit down, smiled, turned and laughed. I said, in this very order, I said: Hold.”
But Flora don’t know hold.
Flora get up with Destiny still on her and push forward. The lines of the lands bleed into each other, the blood of the lands smell dark. She follow Destiny’s back through the flowers. Air in particles so small they force the world to dissolve into beads of itself. A whir of bodies and Flora see people in packs all around her. They mutter; they purr, shriek, and they are talking in no language at all. And their faces fall naturally into laughter and peer down at Flora quite naturally careening into laughter.
A simple silence. Some stay silent, are silent still, and some burn out against the desert sky.
Flora cry out, “Destiny come for you too. Destiny come for you in your leisure suits and your pajamas and your bathrobes and your gowns and your jean shorts and your flesh.” Flora smile for Destiny will be atop them so, so, so soon. Flora see the same sweet immensity of blood in all the bodies, nothing but the blood; Flushed and wet of mouth Flora know Destiny is stronger than human imagined.
Flora stretch out her hands to this one small man, a spot really, just starting to move. He a young man full with the promise of new jeans and nice blazers, a good car and a handsome smile. Flora reach out so hard. Flora feel the bend, the texture, the give; it so delicious real that Flora push harder. Flora look down, down at her feet. Flora will them to slow. Flora wrench her hand flat forward and Flora hear the rip. Flora hand is gone. All the buildings are twinkling towards invisibility. It is not cold or warm – hot.
Flora love hot nights, even here tangled in the formidable nothing that Flora can’t touch, but what was touch here; it was immaterial, beams of light and a world of numerical transmissions coursing through Flora joints. And all her vassals across all the filling stations across all her sand blasted lands lift up their hands into the tooth mouth of Flora God's sky and offer her their eyes in tithe. The light from those eyes is straight up hunger, a blue shock welds the blessed marriage of silhouette and florescence, going, going and gone. An eternal tuning goes on. The birds come here to attain perfect pitch. The insects come to get rhythm. Flora have come for air. All that is left is distance.
Flora look up and don’t know if she see sky or the ceiling is a sky. Flora see a note pinned to the flat air. It read:
Night here was
darker more blue
lonesome crazy
Night here was
bare
Night here was
Over.
Stop.
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