A bird on the power line, as if waiting for something. You are waiting for it to play its cards when waiting, as you call it, is its entire game. Waiting for the sky to say it’s time to go home. Waiting for the revolving door to open. That’s what it seems like to you, fly or a god variant you. It’s just looking for the right moment, of which there are many, of which there are none.

You've seen this scene many times, every single year since you’ve been alive. Long ago, you paid attention when you were horizontal by default, looking up to cast a fishing line toward an end game. Peace and go. As you grow up, become a vertical creature, you make it a habit to look ahead instead. But the trees in this neighbourhood are old and tall, nature's sleight of hand to draw the eye up. This time it feels alien, like catching a ghost stalking you from heaven and not having the vocabulary or the guts to say so. See also: witnessing a glitch in the atmosphere and getting your memory wiped. How else can you explain the way your feet still carry you fine after all that, how you can even conjure a metaphor from scraps of stardust and murk—that is what you are—why the leaf dances and you can't tell if you are being called to from the past or the future, how many rings it takes to pick up the phone.

Control centre slack, inner child resurrecting. You place a whole bucket of shoulds into a drawer and leave it at home, head out to the farmlands to walk the fields. You keep going and going, re-acquainting yourself with horizons rolling over into the next. The tickle of lavender is your escape route. Follow the bunny. 

Open coke can on the counter, a fight in the car, nothing else in the half-dark. Something like a ghost oozes, carries itself from room to room but makes no sound. The only thing to be heard is a whisper of fizz and that, too, is dying down. AirPods in, a very specific Taylor Swift song. Your gut used to clench every time the bridge came on, the right kind of feeling for heartbreak. Today, you go to the kitchen, open the refrigerator door, look for something sweet, all rush and no judgment. The song fades into the background as you scoop sorbet. How delicious the peach, the creamy vanilla base. Before you know it, the bridge has played three times—probably. The ghost was a question asked by a future sound, the answer slick on your tongue: It’s time to move on. 

You had high hopes for the plant labelled easy-care from Ikea. Bought two of them before spring cracked open. The timing wasn’t right, but there was a sale. You left them out on the patio and one day the air dipped and you read about it after: April’s record low. You try every day to bring them back to life, but they’re already gone. All efforts are like placing ash on a dead body, trying to cover up the smell. This weeks-long attempt at CPR gave you time to mourn, some time to grieve yet another thing you’ve murdered. You’re practically a serial killer, this last stroke of inspiration now the scene of a double homicide, and everyone who drives by knows; they can tell from the brown, the way each branch weeps, some snapped in half by the accomplice who will never get named, only you. The last straw is when you decide to prune all the decay and brokenness—something like one step back, two steps forward—and when you are done, mad with ambition and pretend garden shears, you step back to admire your work. A sculpture if you squint hard enough. In a few months, there is a garden in its place; the killer reformed by an inmate: “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make a garden.” That summer you forget about shortcuts and hacks, forget time, find yourself in the weeds and stay there.

You were there that morning when the backdoor was left open, a portal connecting you to a birds-eye view somewhere in the Atlantic. What is it like to breathe air no one has breathed before? Sublime. But you had no control of time, it ticks without your consent. You see velvet ankle-length dresses in April, an iceberg on the horizon. It’s dangerous to be this close. So you turn your back, close the door before you can be split in two: potential vs spectre. The difference between romance and disaster is somewhere along the line, how far you go to stir the pot. On your couch, the ticking continues as variant: a beating heart, steady and unrelenting. Night surrounds you like a cave still porous.  

Your memories act like overgrown vines, moving from room to room and making up muscles and form along the way. One day the house is covered, entire ecosystems sprouting from all over, most whispering nonsense vaguely disguised as truth. Of course you believe it. Were it not for these vines and all the roses and honey you’ve reaped, the day is simply too much to contain. Where is it, and when did it happen, how long has it been like this—the mutation that led to the fork: supernova wearing a clown suit, or most mediocre star on this planet. And which did you take, or did you refuse the choice, it’s hard to tell.  The vines close in from behind, leaving gaps where light can still escape. Roots reach the sky before flowers do.

What was it like the first time someone had a dream? It must be as close to the first time you saw them, you think. Like watching a star grow at a million x speed, then hitting play right before it dies. There is a shore that only became a shore that first time, and then it was just a shore and the edge between ocean and sky indiscriminate. The sinking feeling of change was imminent, because an invisible bridge had now been built and your only choice was to walk through it. How do you walk along the shore if you don’t know where your edges are? Your desires paint them in glitter and stoke them with heat, and you beg the moon to watch over you.