An edible ink. Various thermochromic various vessels can be impregnated with this bananalike odor on demand. If in an urn, add oatmeal and freezedried clock gears for a satisfying snack that changes from magenta to deep purple, as glaciers melt in the North, and islands emerge in the space between sludge and prism.
Dig a hole in the ground. It may be square, round, oblong, or otherwise, so as long as the substrate is something you can confidently call “dirt.”
Toss your dry ingredients: Any exoskeleton, ground gabardine, sprouted silk.
Combine with the molten steel of a ceremonial dagger used to split a vanilla bean.*
Strike while the batter is BPAfree, and make sure to scrape down the sides. While the
ingredients metamorphose, wrap the depleted bean in gauze and administer CPR.
Let it rest until the cicadas return, or when the ground temperature reaches 64°F.
Upon their calamitous arrival, pour into a personalized mug, bow down, and serve.
*You may substitute a switchblade ferried across a swamp between imperfect teeth.
“It’s a 5,000 yearold love note, sweet and unreadable,” the gray suit explains. You had admired her necklace, an amber pendant containing a miniature scroll, while waiting in line at the car rental office. Suddenly clean, cold keys to a red Toyota Camry are in your hands. “Toyota Is Recalling More Than 800,000 Cars Because of Spiders” you recall from the news, in which spiders’ webs in the air conditioning tubes sometimes cause the airbags to spontaneously inflate. You pull out of the parking lot and signal right into an old sunset.
What’s the point of having a body? If we are 70% water, how many of us would it take to fill a sea—an ocean? Your surfboard makes you pine for your former solid self. You miss being so approachable.
Winter is here, and you are a freshly-shed teardrop ice skating. “Don’t be afraid of wiping out,” you tell the camera after completing a triple axel. Your body is frozen, but you feel light as a flower.
Workers wear masks in solidarity, slowly absorbing voluptuous droplets of honey while dancing hexagonally to warm the wax. A refreshing breeze carries the party’s Dionysian sweetness around the world.
“Why are sunsets so beautiful?” you wonder as the sweetness meets and then melts your cortex. Your mind turns to royal jelly and the party begins again.
Golden scissors held by golden finger tips deftly cut a perfect square from the lactodermal sheet, revealing a hidden surface. A lacquered meniscus, crowning in the absence of ceiling, rounds out the four angles of the aperture. It is the opposite of a black hole, imparting a paradoxical warmth on every encounter.
A gloved hand breaches the event horizon, and inserts a straw into the timeless liquid. Capillary action draws golden milk upward to the third eye. Peering down into a void where everything ceases to be, Forever performs surgery on the sun.
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.
Puddles in the conservatory. Your keyboard is solar-powered, water-resistant, and safe for use in the splash zone. Invisible tones hang in the air as you enter the first name of your first kiss, the middle name of your second pet, and the last name of your third grade teacher. You wipe your hands on the towel enveloping approximately 60% water and 45 SPF. The towel follows the downward motion of your hands and falls to the ground into a particularly deep puddle. Printed on this towel is an impression of a penguin covered in oil. As the image absorbs more of the pool, it transforms. The outcome of metamorphose: a common ant milking an aphid for its honeydew. You foam at the mouth.
Puddles in the asylum. Bugs as usual. You are sorry you didn't fix them yet, you were asleep in Cambodia. The mosquitoes were drinking cucumber gas all night long. Their tears of happiness are now pearls dropping to the floor, every hundredth bursts into water from the fountain of youth, every thousandth into silver mercury. The window collects dripping milky white latex, the rubber trees bleeding again in the typhoon outside. Do milk, mercury, and water mix well? Your computer says they do. You hope to have the bugs fixed soon. When your boss wakes everything will be back to normal.
Puddles in the hallway. Nurses in jungle green uniforms slowly administer anesthesia to those still awake. This hospital specializes in tropical diseases, and everyone (including your boss!) will be better soon. Mosquito nets come in many different colors, but you notice green, blue, and red are the most popular here. It’s noon now, but it is dark outside. It is raining in the rainforest. These patients are patient. You hallucinate penguins. You have never been so at peace in a place of passage.
Perfect hay, perfect housefly, perfect horse, perfect owner, perfect hair (on owner, horse, and housefly), perfect stable, perfect barn, perfect countryside out the window, perfect summer to fall transition. Everything is perfect enough to freeze and render into miniature forever. A dried diorama can be educational for centuries.