To Belong in a Field.

Paisley and thyme.

Thaws my mind.

They crowded around her heaped form on the industrious carpet, plaster the only restraint from satisfaction. She loathed the two. She rolled over onto her back and met the ghosts of adolescence glowering at her with lust-rimmed eyes. Musk and an odor too potent to be considered as natural evaded her nostrils and willed her into a subconscious stupor.

She was neither here nor there.

Incorrigible music played through the ancient stereo on the makeshift side table. Why is it that there's such a lure in things one cannot understand? The rough voice droned on ceaselessly and she felt herself smile as she imagined the soul behind those sordid words. Effortless beauty in defiance of itself. She sat up and stared at the picture taped to the nauseating green of the walls and wondered at its subject.

Art has a way of being meaningful in its meaninglessness. Somehow the girl was at odds with that age old phrase from Wilde. Oh, what was it again?

Something about art and its conclusive categorical ranking as pointless. 

All art is quite useless.

Yeah. That was it.

She refused to believe such a picture was 'useless'. How can something be useless if it brings one peace? If it brings one to the ideal oasis of contentment?

Delirious, she ripped off the picture from the wall and crumpled it in her hands as she made her way through the frame of the withered window opposite. Her feet found purchase on the roof under the ledge and she crawled to the edge, taking a breath of the nostalgic pine-saturated air.

She looked onto the lawns of the neighbouring houses and noticed only the overgrown weeds. The unconcealed blemishes of nature. Across the street she saw dancing silhouettes thrown against yellow windows, at work in their own obscure play. There was a sound, like a glass bottle breaking against a wooden stool and a snuffled scream like the cry of a condemned woman. A bird chirped a melody in stark contrast with the present.

She looked at her hands, raw from the bitting wind and the grip on brick, and saw the crumpled picture. A reminiscent smile, like mocking irony, pulled at her lips and she tore it up.

Tore and tore at it in such mad hysteria that all that was left of it was mere misshapen dust. She looked on as the pieces fell away from her palms and floated onto the world beyond.

Fly, so that the world will know peace someday.

She lay on that roof for a very long time. Time left her fighting to obtain reason within chaos though the harmony of the skies, only to get drunk on the stars.

Paisley and thyme.

Oh sweet love of mine.