the physical impossibility of nature in the minds of city kids

So here we are, the five of us, piled upon one another, mashed into the side of the room. Pillows upon pillows upon blankets upon arms upon legs upon hearts and minds and mouths and there we sit, entangled in the mess that is youth and innocence, age and intelligence. We drink bourbon and angel's blood from crystal tumblers and tell each other of our lives, our worlds outside the context of this grouping. Stories of Africa and giraffes and the white sand deserts of New Mexico. Of arrests and court dates and love and loss and recklessness. Today was a long day. Running through the freezing waterfalls and slip sliding over rocks we bathed ourselves in algae plumes, hid our faces in fallen leaves. Mirrors in hand, we set the world on fire, reflecting the purity of intention, the confusion in our midst. The sword in the tree. The man with the guns. Darkness fell like velvet curtains as we rowed over silent waters, blinded by starlight, lost in the fog.

We are without names. Without purposes. Without direction and no way home. But that's alright, we can spend the night. There are beds upstairs and hot showers to be taken. Owls in the fireplace and coffee in the morning. So we trail off, one by one. And when there are barely any left we watch our bodies, draped in quilts, morph into mountain ranges. We watch hillsides change over time, our cliffs crumble, our peaks rise. We watch the snow fall on our precipices, we watch the trees grow, the branches break and burn. We watch the rivers pour over each others' valleys, watch them ebb and flow as they cut through our brittle rock. We fall in and out of love over eons, unable to move from our shared gaze. And then the fire dies.

the walk

We are, if nothing else, a couple of dreamers. Two kids tumbling around these slick city streets, shiny and oily with rain, spotted black with puddles. Knee deep in the proper places. Always past the ankle. Shards of broken bottles wink back at us, laughing as we crunch them underneath our feet. We imagine we are shoeless, masochistic in our desires as we grind our toes into the ground and picture the tiny glass specks burrowing into our skin rather than our rubber. We could run all the way home with bloody feet, the rain washing away all things left behind. Your hair is long and wet and even though you have a hood you won't wear it. Instead you stand underneath the subway waterfalls, letting the rusty water pool inside the neck of your jacket until it becomes too much and you tip over, pouring your collection out and into the gutter.

Tripping, stumbling along, we wind our way through space and time, hands reaching out, faces towards the sky. The trees are on fire in their autumnal glory and their colors vibrate against the clouds, boiling my blood, shaking my bones. We slosh our hands through their golden residue, tiny yellow leaves, wet and dripping and sticking to our fingers and faces, falling down our sleeves. You look like a ghost. Like a weather-beaten angel. Like a motherless child, wandering the abandoned streets of Brooklyn. Post-apocalyptic. Apathetic.

We are now, in this moment, everything we've ever needed. Everything we've ever wanted or hoped to be true. Eyes wide, minds racing.