The Pursuit of Gravity

            I could see the earth spinning. I swear to you, I could feel the world spinning up here on this rooftop. We descended like ghosts over the silent city-- expecting our feet to make peace with gravity.

          But man, poor Mother Earth. What a chore-- to spin twenty-four hours of everyday. Every day of the goddamn week, every month of the goddamn year. Every year, until you just stop.

            We’ve got it so easy.

            And yet…      

            Vibrant smoke signals erupted in the sky, greeting the night dwellers. I turned to her, wishing to see the world in a different light, wondering what colors her burdened imagination perceived. Her face held its own, strong and confident while her wandering distressing eyes were her Judas. There we were, lying on the rooftop, watching lights as they erupted with sound searching passionately for the colors of our souls.

            “It’s not every day we can experience complimentary insignificance,” she said as she lifted a bottle to her mouth to take an outsized swig of vodka.

            I don’t know why I kept pushing drinks into her hand. Maybe I thought that if I wasn’t there alone, I was never there at all-- knowing where the wild will lead all too well. I took the poison from her, more to save her from her self-deprecating nature than to pleasure myself. One giant swig tells you I’m lying.

             I’m lying. Justifying. Call it what you want, but we’re too tired and desperate to hear you. Every few seconds, a simple firework would detonate in my ear drums, pierce the sky with vibrancy and fade leaving smoke for the eager-eyed. Once my heartbeat synchronized with the sounds, many more began to erupt and I felt my hand gripping the rooftop because there wasn’t enough support in the world to prepare me for this torture. It was deafening, almost angry. We didn’t know the feeling of comfort until it eluded us. The serenity was fading. The sky read in red, white and blue lettering, “Let freedom ring.”

            And that’s when it all rushed back to me-- when I so conveniently remembered:

            We were on the run.

 

 

Author's Note

This is a short story, I guess. It was supposed to be the first chapter of a book, but I never went far enough with it.

Reviews

[mikl paul]

The publishing company i'm starting is taking submission for a short story collection, we aren't able to pay but we are covering the printing and each author gets 5 free copies. would you be willing to submit this? or if you have anything like it.