Faded Houses Green

Futility reigned across the lugubrious funicular, bestride a melting series of rotund instigators.

Farther and further the young women ran along the songs of distant kites. While Margaret emptied the soul of a Volkswagen beetle, the Beatles played on a turntable half again too fast, being high on betel leaves of grass, battling fathers of the ripened corn a few fields over. Futility rained on the rainy day parade down minor street to the sound of a calliope mating with a hurdy gurdy as the induced thirteenth labor of Hercules.

“I’m sure something happens next,” Cyrus said, half aloud to the half of the audience still listening. A rhyme, a rhythm, and a riddle walk into a bar. “I’m sure something happens next,” Cyrus said again. The cold moon shuddered in silence behind the third lunar eclipse of the month. Whereupon the transformation from river to soul lifted the gross beauty to heights unknown to anyone loving the last hundred years.

She said, “The butter is better in bitter button holes, but that goes without saying.”

Originally published December 29, 2023