Everyone else is drunk

Nail-file air conditioners drill their way into my ears with the steady tap-tapping of the drip from the uncleaned overfilled overflowing gutters ten feet straight down onto beige aluminum as sirens wail in the distance, on their way to something they or someone believes to be urgent enough to merit flashing lights and an alarming cry. A train whistle resonates in my bones as it rumbles heavily through my backyard. Timid crickets tacitly attempt a two-note lullaby to lull me into a two-toned dream world where everyone lives in an enormous canteloupe and all their shoes are verdantly neon. The wind rustles the leaves insistently: 'no, don't sleep, don't sleep, you don't want to go there. Trust me on this one. You'll only have dreams that you won't want to remember, waking disoriented, disconcerted, anxious and angry and feeling like you've gotten no sleep at all. Better to just lie awake and listen to machines rolling obliviously by until exhaustion consumes your brain and you fall into true unconsciousness. Trust me.' Your mind snakes its way insidiously, amphibiously up my leg, across my sun-baked cacti thighs, your scent intoxicating, seductive, corrosive and compelling. There's a void between us as you bask exotic in the sun and I erode in the tired familiarity of the absolutely ordinary. I can feel you, I can feel you, and everything is velveteen, the softest dove grey into the burgundy stretches of late next week as our paper-crane wishes and basketweave lives overlap and maybe, maybe intertwine for a nectarine moment of tasting ambrosia in your hair, and everything will cool to an igneous black, if we can keep ourselves from bleaching out to alabaster as I desperately trade you a pocketful of buttons for your needle and thread.