SmokeLong Quarterly

We gave each other the ability to float, beside the fallow baseball diamond and the crabgrass tennis court. Dirty, young thumbs pressed to our necks, clamping off the vulnerable carotid artery. Two sets of arms there to catch us as we fell, parting for our brief moment. We woke to the squirming, white beetles in our vision, the shiver in our digits. We told the others we had been far away, wandering some charred, abandoned planet. Told them this was better than Robitussin. But once everyone had their turn, we could only kick at the chunks of dusty hardpan, with the wind cracking the flag against the violent, gray sky. We had all left out the truth of the trip. That things had not changed as we’d expected them to, and we were smaller now. That something now had hold of us, and we would feel this need to exit, again and again.