We herd out into sun and courtyard brick for quick reprieve, and in the herd of us surge nascent attractions, awakenings, a pinch here, a call there, as bewildered eyes turn back to locate suitor, offender. We are gangly, a ways off from full formation. 

We divide into clusters, configurations, across these learned territories, grounds for socialization, perimeter’d by blued iron, flakes of it on our fingers, under our nails. In these twenty minutes a world is conceived and lived and progressed rapidly through small wonders, ages, cataclysms. We mill about, we hunt around, we rush forth throughout. 

In that grassy patch there, by the sparse bushes adorned still by yellow flowerings, we might notice a perched bee, which we’ll in glee and arrogance seize—petal prison. Though before we’ll boast for too long to comrades and co-conspirators, a sharpness will breach containment to plunge into thumb, blooming hot pain. Thus a particular bee will break free, but in dying agony, to the accompaniment of laughter and curses, pained curses, away from which other Us are similarly weaving the minor history of today, these to carry involuntary as recollections into our outer worlds, distant later, later ons, in forms of there was that one day, when we, when he, when I & she, outside, oh, what did we see!

The scuffles, too, we’ll carry. These altercations, downright fights, the fists we clench and wish would fly to connect, to interject and cut off an offense, a speech sowing hatred and committing surprisingly long-lasting bruised memories, impressions. On these grassed sloping grounds we stand and confront quite unimpressively surrounded by ourselves until shove comes, push comes, arms locked around neck, downward, to the ground. Then away we slink, parts of us triumphant, parts shamed. These enmities here will ebb outward, weren’t we friends? Betrayals, brutes.

When conflict-free, playmarkets flourish and commerce proceeds. Marbles to fling with accuracy, yanked spinning tops to clash competitively, and figured cards, pogs, to exchange twixt dusted hands, as currency, while we deliberate, estimate, despite occasionally roaming, grudged deities. These, the tall, falsely maternal, the judgemental, they chide us even though out here they are guests—we truly thought for now we were free, relatively.

And now we approach cycle’s end, though our collective hum still bristles in the hot air. In these remains of a recess, we go forth to desperately scan a dying world’s extremities, looking for escape and hatch, prolongment and alternative, before all falls back toward center, halls and class and compact. In these outer reaches we long and scrape against barriers, we cast desires out, wishing them to latch onto those passing, those vehicl’d, years beyond us; uncaring outworlders. Rocks upon them. We dare, sometimes, we do.

Then comes the crackling end, heralded by speakers loud, musical apocalypse pulling us back. But wait—see us struggle against the compelling dirge—and behold what we frontiersmen have discovered. At perimeter’s edge (north it might be) we stand transfix’d, beholding peers—yes, peers—outliving the curtain call, profanely exceeding the world’s walls, leaning suave against surfaces unmeant for our touch, arms abent raised towards mouths to puff and huff smoke. Ill-gotten, the forbidden deadly. They stand there, unflinch’d, unmoored and untethered, presenting profiles, consummating chemistries, arrayed lusciously. They are contemptibly, infuriatingly, terrifyingly free. We see, not understanding, then flee.

The dirge is at its end, making us accept ours, even if now we’re aware of others. This sight we carry now, carry later, carry always, as it creep-slithers, builds nests, new ones, out of bounds, breeding sinuous, undulating doubts.

In smoke, a world has fallen. And by smoke, heaven, too. By this sacrilege and breaking, our milieu is forevermore, not without pain, made anew.