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Saturday, February 13th, 2010
Five miles away, we dream about going out to the swamps beyond the city, taking out our lungs and inflating them so they’ll lift us off the ground. I point my mouth up towards the night sky, in the midst of thousands of trees. My hand snakes down into my mouth. I feel my fingers, then my palm, then my wrist, then my forearm slide softly over my tongue, notching down my trachea. I grasp my bronchi and yank everything up through my mouth, inverting myself so that my lungs look like bleeding and breathing foliage on a steady trunk. We stand with our lungs up in the air, pointed upwards towards the stars. Little drops of red fall into my eyes. We ascend through the trees, the branches leaving tiny scratches on our faces. The way they brush over our abdomen, our arms, our hips, our legs makes us feel a little bit horny or mystical or horny.
Above the trees, we see the domed shape of the earth. The horizon is made of bright light. It’s not quite as colorful up here as we wanted it to be. In the clouds, we see jellyfish.
You wake me up and suck on my ear. You coo. I touch the border on your thighs where your underwear becomes your skin. I get excited. I lick your cheek. I touch your stomach.
Accidentally, I call the police and tell them that we are going to bomb the city with fire.
“Shit,” I say, “They’re on to us! They’ll be sending a hulk-of-a-man to get us any second.”
There’s absolutely no time for you to change out of your robe into something warmer. There’s absolutely no time to stop cooing. There’s absolutely no
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time to hide the bombs. Outside, we can hear hovering and electricity.
Wearing hats, we run out through the city, to the swamps. We go across the bridge that crosses over the river that comes from the mountains and leads to the sea. We decide that we’ll use the river to navigate, that we’ll go upstream to the farms up in the mountains. We’ll rent out a barn and play in the hay and experiment with new types of fire to bomb the city with. We’ll draw pictures with crayons and lay in front of the fireplace, under a blanket, on foggy, desolate days.
We go to the swamps beyond the city and take out our lungs. We inflate them and float into the sky, into the clouds and we see all the jellyfish living inside and flashing light at each other. I float closer to you and touch your spine. Things will be alright.
Five miles away, we’re a divorced man with strong metal arms. We work for the city. We want to break things. We have boots that let us fly through the air. We feel electric and strong. We’re better than robots ever would be, because we don’t have to live under the raven-shit-stained cloud of idealization
Or, perhaps, five miles away, we just feel broken.
And, also, we get told to fly over to this one address and find the people inside and shatter them. We get excited, maybe, and our arms overreact and rip your desk into shreds. You look at me. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening. I must have over-reacted. Without wanting to, I take a long, jagged piece of shattered wood and shove it down your throat.
“I’m sorry.” I say. “I don’t know what’s happening. I have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can and we can talk about this whole wood thing.”
You mumble something to me through lumber. Your eyes are watering. Blood is starting to spurt between your teeth and the wood. I leave through the window.
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