It’s warm, like that muggy heaviness that hangs in the chlorinated air above pools; artificial and stifling but comforting nonetheless.
You get too close, and the neon will burn your eyes. A remnant of something long gone, but it lives on. Its warmth would **** you, you know. Don’t get too close.

I go to the woods,
The woods go and I see them going, I’ve gone
to the forests of my home since autumnal glow is high in season,
these are holy, golden days and the leaves are blushing in the brook,
but the pond’s gone dry from no rain, it’s all muck. There are no fish and there never were any, but
snapping turtles, bullfrogs with eyes that peek above the surface, water boatmen that skit the glassy surface of the pond avert my eyes. When I was younger, I caught tadpoles in a mesh net and I let them go. Now we have forgotten each other.

Tough green shoots erupt from the soft earth, choking the softer crab grasses, there is blood and lambs in the high days of their short lives, rambling in the pastures of youth.

The pond is blanketed in duckweed, in the sunlit clearing of eleven cottonwoods.

zwei irdische seufzer (two earthly sighs)

Outside, rain will pour down onto the glistening black pavement, while the bystanding pink white clouds hang overhead bashfully. Outside, the oak trees shake their purple leaves mournfully, shaking the excess droplets off of their sorry shoulders. Outside, only the faintest animal cries will be heard over the storm.

Inside here though, artificial light provides artificial warmth, and there is sour whiskey and scones aplenty and the thick curtains are drawn to prevent the windowpanes from exposing a sad truth. Inside here, smiles will be passed around the smooth polished table like candy bars, and young faces are lit up by candlelight. Inside here, things are bad but they could always be worse.