An Introduction To the Great Whatever

​

I

      I  awoke from childhood in a college dorm.

But it was just a dream I hadn't already forgotten.

--
     Last night was tarot cards and whiskey in our summer apartment.
Luke read in his hand that a cataclysm was all but certain and
that he ought to consider sharing his feelings
with that special someone.
 

       We felt no desire to wash the dishes that were groping their soggy way out of the kitchen sink.
Fruit flies billowed out in a flittering cloud as I lurched groggily over the dishes to espresso myself awake.

- Drosophila Melanogaster -the fruit flies-
their species name became a song I sang every morning with a side of jelly toast –

I welcomed them,
I fed them the sticky residual rings of mixed drinks from every last night. Peach Schnapps.

Sudden study of Biology - the murderous subject!
Discarding tiny heap after tiny heap of drugged out drosophila into a petri-dish to meet their soapy doom -
but not before ascertaining their genetic breakdown for science: 

- Eye color: 3/4 devil red, 1/4 purgatory white –

Punnet perfection.

Come summer, I was done with death and
I made it law:
No one is to squish, swat, squash, wash away or do any violence of any kind to these benevolent guests.  I was still drunk from the most recent night before. 
 

There was no fruit in the apartment.

–

II

      The subway stung my nose of urine in puddles and someone was smoking a cigarette on the platform. It was July, and hot.

The woman sitting next to me was a waitress. She spoke suddenly into my shoulder:

You ever have these before?  [She handed me an obscenely orange tiny plastic bottle]

No.

I'm a waitress, so I work 12-hour days & I - 
Well I don't drink the whole thing, just this much.  [Glug.]

Right. 

I got on the train, and didn't see the waitress again.

–

III


      I swore this was my last styrofoam cup, paper sleeve and plastic top I would ever send to a landfill.

      I wasn't sure if I even enjoyed my coffee.
The man next to me drunk from a “Giant-Gulp” – the straw made a hollow squeak as he neared the bottom.
He suckled the last bits and dropped the cup at his feet where he sat

for someone-else to find.

                                                                              
His eyes were hollow. The advertisement on the subway wall ahead of him was for a slick plastic cell phone.

                                                                              Well designed.

–

IV


The events that followed have been described as our "Neo-Sincerity-Hipster-Cliche-Post-College Adventure."

-A baby blue minivan.
-Our degrees worth little more than the swank paper on which they were printed. 
 

We were burning - the four of us.
We were certain. 

We believed in believing in believing in
The threat of being ordinary

prickled our skin like dried sweat.
It seemed there was nothing we couldn't shake.
Society is a myopic cyclops  
and we are

scurrying under its nose in sheep-skins.

- Haverford College

2013