On the Night Before Valentine's Day

The hallway was filled
with party-going kids
waiting for the bathroom.
We all let the girl who walked in with ripped tights
and bloody palms go to the front of the line.
She had fallen outside on the ice, and there was gravel
mixing with her nerve endings.
It was the same color as the streamers and balloons.

My roommates and friends, and my roommates’ friends,
were all here
scattered throughout the floors of this house.
The kitchen smelled like syrup, and the floor was sticky
with footprints.
I made my way through the crowd and found a drink.
When someone caught my eye we’d talk about the constant
stream of work, dwindling hours of the weekend, and who else we knew
here.

We didn’t say anything about the thousand miracles
that trumpeted our arrival.
The clockwork automobiles fueled by dead monsters.
The sink on which I sat, where a simple twist would summon up
a river fresh and boiling.
The constant rhythm of our collective heartbeat.

It takes a certain amount of mindful neglect
to enjoy one’s self,
or perhaps it is purposeful ignorance,
or just unconscious abandon.

Pulling the stairway door open,
my free hand swung and knocked over someone’s beer.
For a minute too long, I stared at the amber pooling on linoleum.
Gravity makes us congeal. This invisible force pulls people together
at our point of greatest depth.
I’ve heard gravity described as resting on an infinite trampoline,
and its mesh is the fabric of space and time. Every body, no matter how small,
makes a dent in the fabric, warping the very nothingness around it in all directions.
Any object rolling by gets pulled in
towards our individual depression.

If heavy enough, the object will orbit us until it has the momentum to break free,
but even if it just glides by we have still altered its path.

I got the man another drink, and tossed some toilet paper over the spill.

Flying down the stairs, I used the railings like rope swings,
holding on dearly as my feet left the ground.
Two,
three,
four stairs at a time. The corners are my favorite
part because estranged walls of the house can reconnect.
Passing by the first floor door I felt the February breeze from the backyard,
instantly made aware of the thick sweat that hangs
in the air.

The lights were off in the basement, except for one bulb right above the washing machine. Bodies swayed between the pillars that held up this house.
Looking into the crowd, there were no faces
that I knew and every song was foreign, which probably meant that they were new.

I walked into the center of the dance floor and closed my eyes.
Starched cotton rubbed across my arm.
Turning,
pale blue lights
jump and flash obscene letters.
The floor began to sink beneath my feet.
Someone turned the cement into quick sand.
Slow and falling, we all reached out our hands.