(After Virginia Woolf's "Blue & Green")
GRAY
The flat gray sky gives back gray. The two-dimensional metallic cloud cover, a closed laptop hiding away its possibilities, leaves us all in isolation. A painted ceiling gray with age and dust; a sheet of impenetrable rock, oppressive; the mountaineer bangs pegs in to draw her line across, to scramble like an insect across the hard expanse, searching for weakness, for difference, finding none. The gray imparts its flatness, its dullness onto everything below, this shadowless windowsill, these drab gray curtains. Unhelpful light; plugged electrical socket gray despair; a cellphone case without the dignity of a crack. We below point our lenses up; our cameras register nothing, cannot focus; gray begets gray in a million blank lenses. Until... There! The case cracks, the mountaineer slips and hangs from her line, the million lenses wash out as a golden beak stabs through its shell.
GOLD
The windowsill blazes gold. The gilded curtain melts; the liquid gold flows into its windowsill trough where it will burn and bubble, to later become an artifact and bangle. The invading army of gold, the rescuing forces of gold penetrate the gray prison walls here, there, and there, there; the ceiling falls into fire, the sky suddenly a tiered and jeweled dome of epic scenes and stagings as the gray gives way, turns on itself, dissolves in dishonor. The yellow-clad mountaineer descends home to the earth in a chariot, robed and crowned, hailed by the million glowing lenses as the goddess of light who opened the laptap, exposed its treasured secrets, shared its golden wisdom. Ancient fire; modern magic; millions of joyous lenses clicking, clicking, saving, sharing, celebrating and worshipping the long due coming of the sky-bird of gold.
YOU ARE READING
Buoyancy
Short StoryA short collection of literary flash fictions. Poetic and queer. Capturing moments of drinking tea, dancing, writing, walking away from hate, or watching the sun come out. Make some tea, take a breath, and enjoy!
