from Two TeenagersTwo teenagers turn around quickly expecting to see blue sparks or a person walking toward a house in an open field. The rest of the day moves slowly while a paper lantern floats off and a young girl with graying hair bends down to kiss the sand. There is a wound somewhere filling up with the sound of silent letters and the feeling of being too far away from a bridge. By the time the fireflies come out someone has died on their way back to a great body of water but no one has been able to sense their absence yet. * Two teenagers come outside for a while and sit in the sun where people talk about what they're going to do with the rest of their lives. In the distance the white car they're all driving travels along a suburban road at a tremendous speed. When they get to the beach there's a window that's not attached to a house and the ocean makes the sound of footsteps running up stairs. They stop to take a breath not knowing that somewhere they are being thought of under moonlight by a twelve-year-old with a face like evening. * Two teenagers in bed with someone they have never seen in the light open their hands and dream of the souvenir shops. They stop thinking about what it's all right to like while a rabbit stands among trees watching over them. The colors in their heads and the smell of the backyard are like an old friend pretending to kiss a shadow trapped in glass. They want to say something about walking across the world from one sea to the next through the all the emptiness that's been taken out of them. |
John Colasacco is the author of Antigolf (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and The Information Crusher (Spuyten Duyvil). Other work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, LIES/ISLE, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and The Iowa Review. Anyone interested in written/artistic collaboration can email at jacolasa@syr.edu. |