Flight

While I walked, I licked my finger, and picked up the stars, like hundreds and thousands.
They tasted sharp, and tickled my tongue.
I coughed, and when I exhaled a mist of incandescence emanated from me. Sparklers.
I covered my mouth, afraid of losing them.
The moon, a soft marshmallow on my tongue.
The trees nodded as I passed.
Assenting. Allowing.
The bats twittered in the trees,
and the cicadas played a ballad.
The wind interrupted with its opinion as I walked.
Only sometimes.
The ground, alive with leaves and debris,
groaned at my passing.
A sound escaped from my mouth,
a tune, a lullaby.
The song rose like hot steam.
It touched the sides of this picture frame.
The city lights in the distance,
a piece of dotted fabric spread over a contour.
Ready to be picked up, and shaken out.
The crumbs fell off the tablecloth,
as they did in a suburban backyard, in a faraway time and place.
The lights spread and fall, shaken off the fabric.
Or, I just drape it around me for warmth.
The lights itched on my skin.
The darkness caressed me,
following my every move.
Tight around me,
my constant companion,
cosy lover,
infinite hug.
The stars made me thirsty,
and I drank from the fountain,
the powerful river,
this quenching landscape.
My throat was no longer dry.
I stopped. I lay down. I slept.
From a distance, I could no longer be seen,
I no longer existed.
Only a landscape remained as I blended in,
camouflaged, a moth on the bark of the earth.
Unseen.
I lay there for hours, days, weeks, years.
I fluttered my wings and joined the breeze.
Only then was I visible.
I rose with the left over laughter in my throat.
And that is all.