Liquid Luck

an array of thoughts (a story)

Nikita Milano “Does Spring Hide Its Joy”

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A heaving giant comes to me.

“You are not your Mother’s worst nightmare”

he screeches in my ear.

He leaves thudding the ground with each sloppy step he takes.

But isn’t a nightmare just a dream? And isn’t it all a matter of perspective? So to my mother I may be living something more of a fantasy life rather than the real thing.

That is different though: Fantasy and reality. Though they bleed. They melt.

I find myself in that cracked river. Reality pulsing into smithereens. Dreams canonically mean more than visions do — or is it the opposite? Do things regain more meaning if you didn’t force them to be that way? Did the life that slipped over me like a silk dress mean more than the life I chewed and made of bark?

Are the visions of more importance than my dreams.

I no longer have the desire to decide. And my desire is so thrashing, so liquid, so pure. It chooses not to fill this glass. So be it. Bring me another cup.

I whimper, I eat some skittles, I moan. Taste is invisible, can you believe it? I can too. Why do these taste so good? Why does something artificial taste so freaking good?

There is something real in there. And it might be the mini-remnants of a few “real” things. My tongue identifies the fervor. It likes to indulge in the real and some.

All I am is a small frightened animal living in the sight of a human being. I look in a dog’s eyes and I see my eyes — in a bird’s — in the sky’s. My mouth reaches for another tumble, I settle for the pen instead.

I read so much it makes me angry. How dare I feel something that is greater than life?

I read sometimes, a good word, a gripping sentence, and the sensations that unfurls within me causes a tender, warm, discomfort. How am I to be of full use? How is my heart full and aching? These words have filled me to the brim. Is this what it is like to not go hungry?

I am criminally dissatisfied that this feeling is enough for me. Shouldn’t I be asking, begging, for more? Shouldn’t someone come here to watch me do it, the reading and the filling up? Would that solidify it as something consumably neat. Ignore me. I am a victim of capitalist America.

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