'parapsychological research'
It was a wooden bird, caught in the highlands, come from the south. It reared and titled, alighted on the strong updraft but made no progress forward. It simply hovered bobbing slightly from side to side as if caught in some medium that would keep it there for eternity, no future, no past, only a lulling bob to keep the insanity at bay.
The insect buzzing of fluorescent lights that hang empty, heavy, forlorn over the street. There are scattered remains of brightly colored candies crushed like fireworks shot down from the clouds to explode and lay broken on the concrete. There is a mother who calls out through the ether to her child proclaiming her successes in urban foraging, promising that child she will be back. Just wait for me, she says, I’ll be there soon. As if the child was left standing in a hovel alone, ready to flee towards another successful pillager. A mother begging her child to stay. I pass her on the platform embedded in the earth, open to the sky and seething with the dark below from which I had emerged. Yet she seemed to twitch and start, as if not able to discern which direction she should take to head off her sure-to-be-escaping child. Her blood.