The Party

It’s a party! Touch the Earth and feel her tremble. The tribal drums beat themselves buried in our brains as we slide skin against skin, slick with sweat.

Delirious maenads, we mambo in the balmy heat, resting only to reach for saccharine slices of guava with greedy lips and thrashing tongues. Sure-footed and seductive, Dionysus feasts and feeds fruit from sticky fingers, nectar trickling down his palms like a blood sacrifice in his own name.

It’s a celebration of life with no regard for it. We ensnare the Sun and ride it across an apricot sky until our bodies are bathed in dripping gold, glowing grand through the night. See us– incandescent– swimming in pools of swirling stardust, spitting in Jupiter’s red eye.

Destiny is discarded. We lower our heads into The Lion’s maw and wait for whispered prophecies, risking death for the paltry predictions of pinball games. We laugh in the face of love, and weigh our souls on the steps of the Taj Mahal.

Look at us! Watch the world spin fast and faster still. We shape a ship out of moonlight and sail it over a sea of tears. Smell the stinging salt as it stains our skeptical brows, bodies boiling for battle.

How we shine! Proud and preening, our steel kisses theirs until a field of red flowers bloom from breathless bosoms– blemishes against a blanching Dawn.

There was a party. But we blinked, and it was over.