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FUME,
“FLWR”
A flower floats in the springtime. It sings about robots and airflow. You open your mouth to taste the flower, but it’s not time yet: a soft powder fizzles into a glitch on your tongue leaving a circular blotch like staring at the sun for a moment too long.
The air tastes like a song. “A song is information in motion,” the air whispers in your ear. “I don’t mind being tasted, but the flower sure does. You should wait.”
You meet the flower again at dusk. Now it sings about Flonase™ and open formats. But something is off, and you close your mouth tightly. (You do the same thing when the street sweeper drives by and kicks particles up into the air.) Can tiny poop from a cyborg puppy really smell this toxic? The adorable dumpster gobbles down this evening’s doggy bag.
Does a mysterious flower produce a mysterious fruit?
The morning sun illuminates a forbidden fruit: The kind of pollen-dusted fruit that makes your mouth itchy, but you eat it anyway. A glistening droplet of syrupy juice, heavy with the burden of its sillage, hangs from the fruit. It stretches its single limb longer and longer, as though it were sustaining a fermata. When it finally lands, it lands on the piano. The “A” key will be sticky for a century at least.
An interview with the flower held at the Sanitation Department yields fascinating new knowledge. The flower, white and docile, enjoys floating in the air while singing about robots, Flonase™, and open formats. It plays the piano in its spare time. Sometimes, after playing for the whole day, it becomes tired, heavy, and poopy, melting into a cute but poisonous pudding that plops onto the floor.