This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2019 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Dora O’Neill
there’s an ocean lodged in the sheets and the springs and
the pillow-matter and the people between them that quiver like
kite strings—while they sleep and while they don’t.
the bassline makes a wingman. the words
punctuated by the crackle-pop of the microwave
strike the porchlight and scatter—
like perfume through an atomizer.
her lips are azalea pink and so wet with gloss that if you look
close enough you can see the moon’s reflection—
begging for a bite and just a few hours underwater where
the body arcs like sheet metal in a microwave.
in one orchestral maneuver,
like love in a Faraday cage, you are quite certain
this is the end of the world.
with parachute bones, you are falling faster than sound.
overwhelmed by the
taste of impact. you briefly believe in God. the air is
synesthetic with ozone, vanilla and hibiscus in no particular order.
you find you are a child learning truth tables:
categorizing your fictions and believing them anyway.
you are beyond the knee-on-knee chewing of confessions like
strawberry bubblegum and have become
the city’s neon bright adverts that reflect off a chrome hood—
backwards, incoherent, ecstatic.
she’s drying off to the hum of midnight radio tuning.
you say this room isn’t dark, it’s just ultraviolet.