The Great Expanse

 Paper, plastic, 5000 year old meteorites.

Old dogs.

 We run to the ocean to let the salt water gush into our veins, ungraceful and lumbering like old dogs.

The Roof

You have travelled so far to get here. You have driven down about 22 roads, up some stairs, down a hallway. You have passed through the streamers hanging from my door: colour and light of the saddest kind. They droop and resign themselves to the warm almost-breeze. You have climbed a ladder, tip toed through the sky, and now you are here with me. The roof is dirty and the sun is setting. It is a Thursday I think: a day that does not seem so relevant, which I am glad for. All of our days up until now have been nights, and all of our nights have been hijacked by event and circumstance. You brought beer. We can see everything from up here. You start to mumble something about that, the same thing I am thinking, but you cannot look at my eyes. Instead you are staring at my feet, which makes me self-conscious. I hate my feet. They curl inwards, hiding beneath my swollen ankles like scared children beneath their mother’s skirts. Flocks of birds pass through the wasted fig trees that almost engulf my house. They call to one another with their bright beaks, anxious and at a great pitch, trying to save the remainder of the day.

Why I don't know what to say to you.

We are unlike stars.



They glow and bulge with institutional memory, spun into life by rotational planets.
We have our hands, we have our feet, we have each new and naked torso, pressed against our teeth and up against the wall. We have each other.
Each of these things are as foreign as the next minute of our lives.
We have not done this before : we don't know what's best.

A dull roar.

(THIS IS OVER.)

THIS DAY LAST YEAR.

Living alone.

And I can’t sleep when you are not here, which is strange. What is stranger is that I can’t get tired. I am actually blaming all of this on planetary alignment. It turns out that you are a planet- when you realign yourself my seasons change.