Category: Blog/All

Spencer closed his eyes and the sensation of spinning was replaced with one of acceleration. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as if he were on a steep drop on a roller coaster. His heart, lungs, and stomach felt flattened against his shoulder blades and spine. 

He felt a sensation as if his mind were being pulled out of his body through a straw, and his pure consciousness, disconnected from his corporeal form, was hurtling through an infinite tunnel of time and space. For what felt like an eternity, he continued to rocket through complete darkness until he began to see a flickering pinprick of light in the endless field of black. As he continued to move toward it, he realized that this infinitesimal point of light, surrounded by endless fields of all-consuming darkness, was his life. 

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After Spencer downed his bottle of Robitussin, they drove, skirting the edges of town, where the strip malls gave way to surrounding crops of corn and soybeans. They came across a 24-hour Meijer and wandered through aisles of blinding white fluorescence until, chastened by the black surveillance camera domes on the ceilings high above them, they hurried up to the automated checkout counter with their chosen wares: Spencer, a new Spalding basketball; and Sal, a mango he’d been carrying around the store clutched against his chest like a newborn. Then they got back into the car and headed back toward campus, taking bites out of the orange-green skin of mango and spitting chunks of pulp out of their windows. They laughed deliriously as Future’s “I’m Trippin’” played from Spencer’s playlist.

Astronaut at the same time

Gone to Mars at the same time

Pluto Jupiter the same time

Pick a planet the same time

I’m trippin’, I feel ignorant

Keep rollin’, keep sippin’

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Spencer and Sal had known each other for as long as either could remember, but had only been friends since middle school.  Spencer grew up in a subdivision of well-manicured lawns and streets named after wildflowers. Sal lived across the thoroughfare, on a block populated by run-down apartment buildings and small, five-room houses with weed-choked lawns strewn with broken plastic toys and battered lawn furniture. 

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