Some kind of violence holds this world underneath us. It swells and swerves as your body arches on the branch, your solidity rushing through liquid naked blankets. We live on trees, amidst eternal sundry sating mornings. Yet you long. You long to live in those bubbles beneath us. They’re too expensive to afford.

“We could just go down there and live, you know?”

You love those bubbles; you love the violence they swim in. I love these trees; I love this roughness against my back. I love that we are high up in a place where homes are built out of mud and earth that nurture and feel warm in the cold of a cloudy morning. Those bubbles are fragile, pompous spaces that think they hide while all they do is reveal. But you never listen. You just long.

So I did it. I took the plunge and jumped into a bubble one fine lazy summer song. I plunged, I threw myself away from you to understand and feel what you longed for so desperately. And I entered them. I entered a night for the first time. I saw fire for the first time. I saw time collide into sparks that the flames threw about carelessly. I saw time afraid. I saw people whisper; they were as timid as the night. I tasted midnight oil. Syrupy and bland. Blank and clueless. And I longed to burn. I longed for you to be my midnight oil and burn me through and through.

So we lived on anyway. You folded the sheets every morning and slept with me very morning. We knew night existed somewhere but we just couldn’t find it afterward. I could pass a thousand mornings knowing night existed somewhere. And I could pass another thousand knowing you would plunge with me into it.