Superfluidity

The blue flame close to her lips. The disease pinched and crippled. Lotteries of skin. Making up winners. Pillows on the floor. The darkness. A forklift. Putting everything too big into the corners.

I'd try to tell him. Old is real. This series of deaths. They find us. After we've forgotten how long it's been. Since the room smelled like sex. Or cum. Or anything that tricks the brain. Into believing it has ever lived. Or lets it live outside the thick callouses that own it.

The lights went out, but the lantern didn't turn on. We waited in the dark for awhile. Tangled in the quiet. Taming the words with broken chairs and fraying whips. The roar of skin from small cages. The hydrogen. Too light. The sequence expanding. As we fell.

We waited. Until it was light again. And no one could see us. Sneaking glances at a moon that seldom noticed. The people. The dirt under its fingernails. Still waiting for soap.

Inertia. That's what they call it. When things keep going long after they should be dead.

The lights came on hours later. But she was no longer interested. In the whims of particles. Constantly colliding. Always falling apart soon after.

Gravity slept. We called it names and swore it would never catch us.