The blanket only barely touches the floor from the bed,
but there’s at least a hundred miles of tunnels
and potential for underground civilization to consider.

He’s somewhere in the east wing
of an imagination that’s impressive
even by a seven-year-old’s standards.

She’s hopelessly lost. At least twenty miles past
where they were supposed to meet up and talk over
the next step towards getting back to the surface.

They’ve been missing for five minutes,
but five minutes is almost certainly going to turn
into fifty years at five-and-a-half. All efforts to find
something inconsistent in the blanket’s pattern
have been useless. It’s all come down to a matter
of trust and belief that can’t be washed off
the tips of their fingers.

It might not be there when they get older.
She’s got the perfect genetics for drugs,
and he’s already known as an overly tense little kid.

They could very quickly become dried-up teenagers
who punch their fists in the air and scream
“Amen! Hallelujah! Fuck the rest of them!” at thirty or thirty-five.

Suddenly,
under the blanket in his bedroom
there’s a quick cut of light and half of the tunnels
disappear from all angles into unknown depths.

It causes him to fall forward. He inadvertently grabs
her small arm with his hand, and they almost crash
into each other head-first, but he slips past her
and crashes into the mattress.

A few more the tunnels disappear. There’s not much time left.
The pattern is shrinking and the light is coming through
like a freeway on fire. She laughs when he starts talking
with his face still in the mattress and kisses the top of his head
as the rest of the tunnels collapse
to leave the blanket barely touching the floor.

After lunch and Eek the Cat
there’s no question that they’ll try again.

They don’t talk about the kiss.
It never actually happened.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
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