Heliotrope

Stretched out on the grass, I follow the sun like a craning flower. What a gorgeous way to drown. A renegade bubble that sinks, content, into bottomless goo. My, our, star; I follow it always in minute motion, craving heat and comfort. The stereo loops over and over, it's beautiful roar played out hour after hour. Soaring, pure, hungry music.

With my eyes barely closed I teeter on the brink of sleep and in this halfway state I begin to absorb the world around me. I feel each grass blade's tendril kiss and how they connect under warm earth. I hear plants sway, brushing sexless kin in quiet orchestra, just audible above the music.

I hear distant motion and distant excitement, the cries and screeches of summer children, as if newly unwrapped, perhaps so. I feel the momentary cool of passing bird's fickle shadows and those of the insects that fizz and babble in this bath of sunlight. I feel a part of everything.

I am in the hot cabins of trucks that clank through baking streets, stomachs full of cold food, packaged clothes and petrol. I am in the tops of trees, each one a mountain, looking down on ball games and effortlessly unfolding romance and also searching up, in reverence, to clear skies. I'm in the thick strings of bass and rippling through the taught skins of snares that howl out of terrace basements.

I reach inside for the tethers and slice through each with a thought, Unleashed, I drift away.