Midsummer day on a spinning dot. Daisies and hummingbirds, two by two, unicorns, too—folding into the horizon line. There are no shadows in the wormhole. A rabbit with airplane ears pops out from somewhere in China. All of them, looking for you. And you are just out here looking for a job, trying to catch a star before it drifts beyond the bend.

The white room turns golden as if gods are about to descend or destroy. You won’t know which because beauty and light precedes all events, even the great and terrible. And this is a room made for everything. The baby is a monster, the monster is a baby. The seed is a trap, the trap is a seed. All this, made up. A room is a made-up place. You are a room. Arrival is not a place entered; it is a prerequisite.

It’s sunset at the department store. Photo booths inside obnoxiously lit arcades and giant fake flower arrangements looming in its best impression of a tropical getaway. First it piques your attention, then you think it’s cheesy, then give it a little space and it’s self-aware and satirical to the point of interesting. At least it’s not afraid to tell it like it is, yes in fact you have felt like that what a great question what a simple question why has no one asked. Well, it’s simple: everyone’s stuck in a loop and the escalators are not working. 

You pinky-swear, I’ll never let go and mean it more than Rose meant with Jack. The line is drawn: child to grown up, romantic to impressionist. Every year the ratio to time spent next to the pool increases, and somehow you become mindful of the survival of others. The rabbit is buried in the ground and it’s not a matter of distance but effort. There is no leap, only a step obscured in limestone and sometimes all it takes is a little desperation, and the feeling of nostalgia is what they call missing something real. 

Night blooming jasmine, smoke leftover from fireworks, your body and air lingering in the heat wave like it’s a vow. An entire galaxy compressed into a piece of sky is hanging over you like a reminder that the night is young and the days are long but a life is short. Run it like an orchestral arrangement, an electric crescendo running at high fever. Noon is time for staccato, a kind of dance you can measure, but your bones are way past that now. Drag them back into the light, any light will do. 

In the greenhouse, tomatoes on vines grow at the speed of gravity. It’s a circadian paradise tucked in shadows, time ticking to fruit and flowering, far away from the dying sun. Instead of bursting into flames—what, did you think you were fire?—you morph into bubbles grasping for something to hold onto. You are here for them, they are here for you. Everything else is everything else. Peace and thunder compound and the dandelions rush in. 

A machine made of clay. Trojan horse or defence mechanism. Wabi sabi or wasabi if you say it fast enough three times. The flower bud is all guarded until it can’t stay shut to wonder, blooms with a performative slant. Goes down kawaii.

The fragrant call of the ocean hits your nose with salt, fills it until not a nerve is spared. If a siren could be faceless and silent, you would not call it that. But you’d still sink so deep there’s no way out of the undersea forest festering with ruin and wild, every unsolved mystery. How the tiny men fall mighty.