Adrenaline never keeps me awake.
I’m falling, quickly rising again.
Bobbing up and down,
feelings become a roller coaster.
Smoke puffs into the luminescent night,
but the smells of the newborn city
are enough to make your head scream.
My ears taste the throbbing that is another’s heartbeat.
The frustration doesn’t ebb away
as it normally does. Oh no.
The scream turns into a ferocious feline, her eyes transforming to pools of black contempt.
She tries to swallow me whole, but I start running away
until she’s a speck in the distance.
The disapproval turns to tiny ants
scurrying to rebuild their derelict mound. Great.
I see the flightless bird
perched on a nearby sequoia with branches
just out of reach.
I wanted to touch that beautiful nameless beauty, but not before it turned into a
thousand white moths fluttering in the breeze. Calm down.
I dreamt of everything talking, from the water bottle sitting on my desk,
to the pattering rain on my window. It doesn’t suffice.
A puff of smoke into the luminous night revives me, but not before I pull out a red marker
and try to draw a scarlet line. No, STOP!
I look to my left and right, spotting a saxophonist. The frustration goes, the anger ebbs,
Numb feeling of nothing evaporates. No more can I see a flightless bird, but a dove.
I take the saxophone away.
I play my melody, becoming the dove,
soaring above the stems of broccoli
that were once known as trees.