They say that we're empty, a generation who thrives on the exsanguination of their own throats. Our gills are inconvenient, an eyesore worse than yesteryear's neck tattoos. But you've lost your faces to the space masks that keep you breathing. Mirrors smashed, the glass melted to make bridges across confabulating ponds that we skate across on our bellies, impervious to the sludge of the twentieth century. We harvest the petunias under the blue light cast by the sunken sun, awaiting her last light, our skin the trellises for green blight. Our muscles tense with planty growths, you say is another scourge, but it's keeping us alive. Another riot on the horizon, our hands callused from practicing the swing of hammers, suitable for breaking beyond the masks of our servitude.

In High Places, We Tremble Repairing the roof was a nightmare. Each piece of shingling a cost he couldn't compute. His wife suggested he do it by himself. How hard could it be? He had never told her about his fear of heights, of being dangled off a hotel balcony, his feet kicking in the air.