Synthetic Constellations

It was the wind in winter's ribbons that took me up with the roman candle. I shielded my wide eyes from stinging iridescent lights, my neck craning and stretching back. Colored stars - golden, violet, crimson - fell shining like cosmic palm fronds, rushing for the silver mirror below, flashing, crackling before winking out and fading into smoke. Each firework was my chariot, each burst my burning waterfall, each roar of the cannons my wild laughter. My breath came in time with the sparks above. My heart was shaken into rhythm by the tremors, like a tremendous pulsing sub woofer.

Imagination grew wings, flippers and legs all at once. The fire, well, it consumed - drew everything together in once blazed moment.

[inhale] Boom.

A steep precipice falls away beneath my feet, golden brown and crumbling. Dry, cracked fingernails scrabble behind me for purchase, toes gripping the edge like a vise. Nothing much above but a sky the color of someone's eyes, clutching a precious nugget. The cliff opposite, streaked with dusty rust and plum shades, fades in and out of focus - a tree growing and bursting into boulders that went raining down - the side swelling slowly as some force tunneled from the inside - a set of jagged cracks speeding in outline until it crumbles, inside out, releasing a [exhale] red-tailed hawk. Dark wings stretched, growing in span, becoming Mother Nature's Blanket of Night, peppered with hummingbird holes. One flight feather, falling away from a limb, spiraling down, buffeted, slowly swirling in elongated fashion towards me. My head feels light, as though gravity decided it no longer wants me. It's getting closer. Boy, you could knock me over with a -

I go tumbling down with the boulders, that innocent barred feather swinging back and forth after me.

[inhale] Boom.

I sit at the end of the long line. We are crammed against the wall in a bleak carpeted waiting room, with gray pencil cacti placed unceremoniously in three corners of the room. The only source of light is an unshaded fluorescent bulb, hanging from the ceiling. Its harsh light cast shadows on our [inhale] taunt, drawn faces. In the last corner there is an unassuming steel door. We all start as the doorknob shifts and a nurse enters the room. She scans a long checklist, looks up, and calls out my name.

I follow the woman through the door into a [exhale] stainless steel room. Varied instruments lie on a sleek silver tray. A man with a dark shock of hair greets me with, what seems to me, false cordiality. He shakes my hand and guides me to a chair. He eyes me calculatingly as he pulls out a small syringe. I think, I hate needles. The man smiles icily, and tells me not to worry - a sharp, jabbing pain; he had stuck me in the arm with that needle, and my vision swims. 

I wake up in a shifting, ethereal world. I can't make out the glimmering lights around me, though they hover just out of reach. I try to blink, and discover [inhale] I can’t. My peripheral vision tunnels, as I move what felt like my head all the way around to see. It was dark, the space reaching outwards, and I start to feel a sense of claustrophobia when a beautiful French door - false gold gilt - appears in front of me. I desperately clutch at the handle and stagger through. 

The door slams shut with a snap, and I am suddenly hovering uncertainly over a roiling, tumbling mass. Everything in black and white. I turned my head with painful slowness, and saw that a craggy black rock looms in front of me. It seems to exude light through its blackness, feeding the small fig tree clinging to the surface. I am drawn to that pathetic tree, but the longing scares me. I turn, [exhale] urgently sweeping my eyes left and right, trying to find an exit out of this horrid place, but that small tree, glorious in its uselessness, follows me. I run, somewhere, anywhere, but that tree keeps following me. I can’t stand it.

[inhale] Bo[exhale]om.

A vast expanse of blue grassland extends to the horizon, dotted here and there with gnarled trees and bushes. Clumps of dark heather bends before the night wind, sending their whispering voices along with the breeze as it moves between the leaning stems. Above the grassland, stars twinkle coldly down from high in the heavens. Their hazy bed of indigo velvet stretches across the roof of the world; everything beneath it bears its color. The full moon [inhale] silvers the edges of  indistinct objects, so that the whole of the grassland looks as though it has been brushed across the top with shimmering dust. Everything is silent, save for the blithe wind, who continues to tumble its way across the dark grass, rustling the heather as it goes.

                 

At the farthermost edge of the horizon, I watch silently as [exhale] a slight purple glow appears, steadily arching its back to fill the indigo sky with a crescent streak of violet. The crescent pulls up a slight line of green as it ascends, who in turn drags with it the muted colors of pastel orange and red. The new colors gaze out across the blue and silver grass, shake out their bright robes, and toss them across the sky. They paint over the shadowy grass with streaks of pink and orange, reaching out with their arms until the sky is a glorious blaze of golden and crimson rays, heralding the way for the sun. It's not until I feel its warmth that I realize I'm shivering.

[inhale] Boom. 

[exhale]

The great finale starts, a ricocheting mass of gold fountains, green sparklers and screeching rockets. I shake the hair out of my eyes, cheering with everyone else. Whatever force possessed me slips away, my images dissolving like morning dreams before I remember they even existed. Does this happen a lot? Do others experience this mental flight? I can't remember; my heart's still vibrating, beating in time to the synthetic constellations above .

[inhale]

Let me light the last fuse.

--

 

Just a song that's been stuck in my head a lot as of late. Explicit - i.e. one F-Bomb. Just in case though, if you care.

Human After All, by Twin Atlantic.

You do not know how hard it was to not choose "Fireworks" by Katy Perry. 

[exhale]