black swan

(Disclaimer: remember, this is just a 10-minute stretch.)

*

Here’s the conversation, the way it played in my head:

Salvador Dali said, “Take me, I am the drug; take me, I am the hallucinogen.”

To which, Joni Mitchell replied, “I could drink a case of you, darling, and I would still be on my feet, I would still be on my feet.”

A game of chicken, a gauntlet of dares. Which one are you- the drug or the drugged? Which one do you want to be? Do you want to be the spoon or the force that bent it?

Oh these are not healthy thoughts, not at all. Who boasts about melting clocks? You want to be the cause of pinpoint pupils. You want to overtake their brain, shut it down, make them shake.

But then again, who brags about their capacity for heartbreak? You’ll be sorry in the dead of the night when you can’t sleep, when your hair stands on end, when your stomach squeezes into a globe like the world you threw away in your pursuit of the edge. You wanted to see how far you could take it, but you won’t ever be the same.

Yes, yes, that’s what we learn in the books. All those things. All those facts. But what about this fact: put a moth and a flame together, and the moth will get burned, and the fire won’t feel sorry.