1.

We open on a pink and lemon sky, a barn, black ground, one tree, and wind. The director is having fun with angles. He falls down the stairs. He fires a gun at his temple and the ocean pours out. Two ghosts float out of an accident. They spiral like water and disappear through a drain in the sky. The world feels scribbled in—recklessly.

 

2.

An old lady lives inside a bell. A skeleton lives inside a flower. A cave lives inside of a cabin. In the cave, a watch is left face down. The old lady begins to see images of time. There is something very wrong. We fly on the path of a violin string. The atmosphere skitters.

 

3.

Neon sets the stage. The city shows decay. Angels shed feathers cramming into commuter trains. People jump a considerable distance from their own skulls into the clouds. Angels clock out at the end of the day, too. Everything we own, scattered on the train platform: our hands, the numbers from a clock, some parachutes.

 

4.

A person can be small. Microscopic. Let’s hide under the table. We can be two categories: a puddle of sadness or a puddle of xylophone notes. These are the ruins of a world. There are pieces of it scattered everywhere. Off in the distance. The sound of a chain. Off in the distance. The sound of a wooden door. Off in the distance. The world’s smallest piano.

 

5.

This is a winter story. The sky is heavy and sinking. There’s a man in the snow. The hills look sleepy. They look warm. He sleeps beneath an opera singer. Every day begins the same way. A thief comes with the wind. A match lights the air. The moon awakes in the dark. It’s the feeling of falling asleep under a quiet snow. You get the sense that fire is coming.

 

6.

A sudden change in setting: you’re in church. A building shakes like a struck piano. A door bursts to kindling; the pieces falling with hollow thunks into what you’d call a nice pile. I’m looking for something of myself. I spit into my hands and grip an axe that isn’t there. A hole is ripped into the air and a cemetery disappears through it.

 

7.

She uses her fingers to spark an imaginary fire. He drops a ladder against the sun. A bride and groom run endlessly through fields. A motion, a force, a small hole in the air. The world comes in waves. Sometimes there are no stars. There are no sounds. Sometimes, we can hide forever under a sheet. We can choose to not eat our ghosts.

 

8.

We’re meant to see everything through a haze. We use our hands to form a small room in front of the chest. A whole world in here, where things can float. They move across the world like risen shipwrecks. This is what we leave behind.  No fires, no plans, no skies, no birds, no refuge, no place to sit. We walk out of the picture. A storm rolls in. Everything begins to fall.