14:13 - October 02, 2002
weed dream part III
We were crouched behind the line of bushes in his backyard, palms up, cupping a mushroom each. Though they looked like simple mushrooms, the kind you would put in your salad in the cafeteria, they were not simple mushrooms. And I semi-quote Perks yet again; 'since you are older than me, I think you know what kind of mushroom they were.' I didn't want to eat mine until he had, but he didn't want to eat his until I had, so I closed my fist around mine and walked around to the front yard, taking tiny bites the whole way until, standing in the middle of the front porch, the mushroom had been swallowed.

My vision was the first thing to warp, almost immediately, as the front door blazed half red, half yellow, and the ground tipped beneath me. My brain began to spin, rattling against the sides of my skull, and I lay down and smiled at my smiling self smiling at my smiling self for a long, long time, and when I rose the effect had gone. Disappointed, I wandered inside his house, managed to dodge his mother, who wanted to know why my eyes were all droopy, and reached the top of the stairs, where he lay board-stiff on his back, hands folded, in the hallway. I thought he was dead, and crouched beside him to feel his pulse, but his eyes opened then and he smiled at me. 'Did you take yours?' I asked.

'I did,' he nodded, and laughed disbelievingly. 'I did.' I squealed with sudden laughter as the vertigo came back with a vengeance, and put my arms around him, took him in a bear hug and rolled over, over, over until we were on the other side of the room, dizzy and out of breath. My face tickled from his drifting hair and it felt like a tree had just shed its leaves on me, only me. The floor was hardwood and his body was softwood. I closed my eyes.

-------

Different time, different city, different boy. The constant was her, still in my area code, wherever we go she's still in my area code. My dorm was a high rise. He had found my room and as she took him in, leaning against the doorjamb, wearing roller-skates, she turned to me and said in a low voice, 'Hannah, you were right, he IS perfect.' As if he were my property, as if I had carved his exquisite face from wood, as if I had weaved his long hair from silk. We set out for the car in the parking lot miles away... it was all downhill... and his roller skates kept slipping and I kept having to put my hands around his waist to keep him from rolling right through stoplights. At the ice cream shop he bought a lollipop and removed his skates, looking straight at me as he did so. She whispered behind me, 'he's impulsive, he's impulsive, that's what I never said...'

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