This is the plan: I'll walk to nowhere and you can follow me. We'll follow the row of parking meters,
go out into the world, become a challenge for stain sticks. We'll make paper-clip chains of our promises.

This is the motive: we were surprised to be older. We were still so young.

This is the crime: the little lie that you tinkered with. The bees you let out into the world.

This is the sentence.
posted by Adam at 11:23 PM [edit]

Wake up, Lukas. Wake up. Half an hour ago you were walking down hallways of clouds, and now you've ended up here again-- a crowd. Could you not get your hooks in? Did you miss out on the night? Did you wait up too late?

Wake up, kid. All the others are in the kitchen painting today. All the noise has been fed back into the stereo, put on a loop, archived for your children. Don't let it keep you from breakfast. Don't let all the other kids choose before you.

Wake up, Lukas. There's something glistening. It's for you, kid.

And all you need to do is wake up.
posted by Adam at 11:15 PM [edit]

Another story of vanishing

This detective story is going to end more quickly than the rest, because it starts so sadly.
On a hotel bed--the first big trip--little Jim jumped up and bounced higher than ever before.
He was scooped to the moon. A team of detectives, found holding an impressive
meeting in a public park with an impressive bottle shared between them, was hired
on the spot by Jim's dad, a publicist who was very successful at publicizing.
The detectives came to the hotel room (having inquired already about free continental
breakfasts) and magnified and magnified. They magnified until everything in their surroundings
had grown larger--the nighttable, white towels and lint pills, pay-per-view porn.
They were all magnified out.

Jim's dad, in the meantime, wavering in his faith in detectivery, publicized his loss.
He publicized Jim in every newspaper and every pop-up video. The whole world
felt it had lost Jim, lost innocence, the first big trip.

As the detectives sat and crunched mini-bar peanuts while selecting the 9:45
showing of "Jim: Tale of Woe and Consequence", Jim's dad dismantled
his publicizing empire nail by nail.

Jim, in the meantime, took slipper steps on the moon.
posted by Adam at 12:24 AM [edit]

Fortuitous: the presence of dogs in this only alley that I will call my home.
For another beer: your money and your time. For cows we build boxes and have
atomic monologues. For you: nothing, I have nothing left. Formica: the countertop, the muffin,
small seeds of dissent. Forgetting: a nation, a plan, an economic body.
For Jane: these maps from my attic, I dripped water on them, Texas grew
even larger, no non-stop flights traverse it, its summer is burning and huge,
we all run into the water to escape and are lost down the drainholes of Texas.
For Will: another strawberry, the hilarious cadence of the eyes that follow it,
"oh boy" when you eat, and red rivulets stain your chin. Wince when they
wipe you clean--they know not what they do. For flight: a machine,
or one small kiss please. For fancy: placemats, though TC thinks them unnecessary.
Four lies: the lie of lending, the lie that confers power, the molten lie,
the lie that love was lost. For lies: this pen.
For dinner: will you help me decide? For you: this ending,
the only nothing I have left for you, a little smashed in the corner
and warm from my pocket, where it was left all day in the care
and the damage of hands, hands, hands.
posted by Adam at 12:16 AM [edit]

Formica

Where you are: is in a field in a world that is
not of your own making. Where you are:
a playground, empty of sunlight. Where you
are.

The oldest detectives, whose remains date
from only slightly after the emergence of the first
homo sapiens, carried no tools
of their trade: the anti-toolmakers.

Where you are: orange juice pours slowly down
the sink. Where you are: my number is written
on a scrap, on the dresser, in your world.
Where you are.

It took eight times dynamite to unearth
a detective fortress, under the slow silt
of undetected lives. In all the nooks and crannies,
with all our forks and flashlights, we found
all the questions.

Where you are: older than yesterday, and a
little angry because of it. Where you are:
keep me here tonight. I'm warm. Where
you are.
posted by Adam at 12:13 AM [edit]