| On rainy nights and mean red Tuesdays, when loneliness cuts deep as a switchblade, and fear and loathing flow as freely as the Euphrates, I dream of Appleglass Falls: that place of soft edges and smooth landings, where the dark of the night is blackbird blue, and the verdigris hue of chartreuse grass by Lake Cottonsoft puddles with diamond dew. In meadows where lovers picnic as the lion gambles with the lamb, a kitten paw breeze never drops below twenty degrees and brushes the tender alcoves behind uncovered knees. No leafcutter ants crawl in the sward. No yellow jacket wasps prick mason jars of jam or the flesh between bare toes. Close to the centre of an antediluvian town that fell fully-formed from a thrift store jigsaw, friends greet friends by neat picket fences, their loose shirts kissed by sprinkler mist. There, my memory palace contains many rooms: windows open to dispel the gloom, peony curtains parted in chicory wisps to welcome a flurry of sunsparked halos, chinook handshakes and woodgrain scent of distant rain. Such freshness carries on the air like pollen on bee legs, and brings to mind the incepted dream of ambling beside a petrol blue river with a girl next door in chiffon polkadot dress, the sharp tang of fireweed and wild garlic snagging on our skin and hair. A rope swing hung by children dangles just above a patch of reeds where a flock of wild geese sleep. Most evenings, we coast top down to a doo-wop diner to guzzle foil-wrapped burgers and malted thickshakes then on to a drive-in to watch the undead disturbing their graves and bobblehead alien invaders raiding suburbia. Later, from a moondripping windowsill, the harmony of nightjar and whippoorwill lullabies me into slumber where visions of forgotten summers spool and expand in möbius strips of silent colour: riding shotgun to the Dairy Queen for frosted soda pops; stick fishing off Butternut Pier; spying wild caribou and brocket deer hiding between strips of viridian and teal in the dappled belly of Solitude Forest on the county line. These memories, while they are not mine but those of my daydream avatar, are superimposed with glowing bars and light refracted from caramel stars. In this spectral union of overlapping spheres, I slip through the ellipse where the next world adheres to the one left behind. It is as real as the pillow on which I rest. |
| Ross Thompson is a writer from Bangor, Northern Ireland. His debut collection, Threading The Light, is published by Dedalus Press. |