Parallax

(Daydreamer, Faint Light, 2011)

Girl, We Couldn't Get Much Higher. Come-on Baby, Light My Fire.

When she woke up, she realized that she was somewhere different from the place she first rested her eyes. All around her was a fiery glow, and at time she thought the world was on fire. At last, the Apocalypse...

She got on her feet, small volcanic rocks fell from her back, she looked down to see the sea, she looked up to the sky only to see there was no longer a sun, just the colors of a sunset, permanent and unchanging. She admired her skin in the faint light of sunset glow, it was the softest light she had seen. High above the clouds she breathed with shivers, she was cold, and dizzy, in the spectacle all around her. It was all beautiful but frightening, chills, yes, it was scary, and to be alone, up there, all alone.

There is something about sharing a moment, seeing and experiencing something absolutely beautiful and mysterious and full of wonder, with someone else. Perhaps its ensuring, that you have experienced this thing, and when you tell others they will never quite get it, their skin remaining non-goosepimpled, no shock, instead as you try to convey to them about such places where it is fixed in permanent sunset you come off as crazy. Your hand gesture explodes, aliens are beautiful-like, and yet they're left scratching their head, wondering what on earth you're talking about. They don't understand, it's not their life, it wasn't their eyes. They are outsiders, so are you, to them, an outsider. But to be with someone else when all of it goes down, to share something like that, they are there with you, just as crazy as you, just as blown away, you can scream at each other, that is perfectly fine, they understand, they are just as speechless, just as dumbfound, they have that.

Somewhere in all of her loneliness she invented him, she woke up on top of that volcano with him beside her, still sleeping, peaceful and stupid-looking, not knowing how he got there nor what to expect when he opened his eyes. She sat there looking over, it had been understood and respected by the time she was waking up again, in this restart of her first morning/afternoon/evening in the place of infinite sunset. He woke up, first looking at her feet, she was standing, seeing the glow on her flesh, then looked above, seeing her stand beside him, then see it is darkish, the world was on fire, he thought. He grabbed her ankle, said good morning, and let go. He got up on his feet but quickly fell. He coughed, breathing deeply, he wasn't himself, or at least his body wasn't as he looked off into nothing, his eyes lost. She came down to meet him face to face and saw he was sick. He coughed some more, his face had lost the color it once had, he was blueish, ghost-like. She panicked, wondering if he was going to disappear, his flesh was turning white and whiter. He was once a well suntanned man, looking brown and golden, blessed by the sun itself, now that was all a concept. She spoke to him, asking him if he was fine, but he looked confused, struggling to talk, holding her hand, and shaking all over. Perhaps this wasn't best idea bringing him up here, maybe it was the climb that made her body adapt to this climate, he hadn't done that, he just appeared here, without effort, without earning his place in the house of the sun. His eyes dulled, looking off into infinite, she held him in her arms, and he just sat there quietly, whisper things she could barely hear, but what she heard sounded like,

"I'm going home, it's too cold here, the air is too thin and almost non-existent", "I'm going to die, die, die", and one final phrase passed by barely audible, "Smell ya later".

His body disappeared in her arms, she looked confused, so did he, but he wasn't he anymore, just a pile of clothes that hugged her with emptiness. She wondered where he went like this sort of thing happens to them all the time, she wondered if he would appear somewhere public and be naked since he hadn't gone with his clothes. She smiled at the image she produced of him appearing at the beach, a family having fun, kids playing in the sand, the dog playing fetch in the ocean, mother and father looking over at all of this and relaxing for the first time in a long time and then a naked man appears from the cosmos, hairy and flesh, blindingly-pale skin in his bathing suit area, him cupping his balls as he awakes from a cold slummer of space/time travel. Everyone around him freaks out, the dog runs up to him, barking, "You freak, you, where's your clothes, get the fuck away from my family, you fiend, you pervert, I'll bite it off!". This is horrible, someone get him out of here, teleport, teleport, teleport, or just run, run, run. He runs off into the surrounding forest, penis flying in the wind, butt as white as a ghost face, and he's gone.

She feels alone again, and thinks a lot. During this whole time her notion of time is lost, there are no differences of light throughout the day and night, it is all sunset, without a sun, and she just thinks and thinks until she falls back to sleep. Tomorrow she will wake and see this world for the first time all over again, she will transform the earth around her and create him out of thin air, he will disappear in her arms, and she will do this over and over for the next week before realizing it was all a dream.

She wakes up in her bed, she's in the city, there's an ambulance racing down the streets below, she is back. What a dream she wonders, and as she exits her bed she notices fine grains of sand, against the black of her sheets they look like stars, the constellations themselves, each one is there, and she thinks to her self, when was the last time I saw the stars, when was it...