They tell me to write what is awesome,

and my fingers tap the keys like a blind spider’s mandibles,

drawing a blank.

No flies tonight.

They tell me to write what is awesome, and Pluto looms on my screen,

but its heart is too cold for my warm one even though the advancements that turned pixels

into polar regions is blowing my mind.

They tell me to write what is awesome and I want to know what would happen if you lifted the ocean out of the ocean to look at the shipwrecks and the statues and the lost cities in the sand

and set the water gently down again.

It eats too much, like empanadas disappearing into a portly man’s stomach. We know less about the bottom of the ocean than the surface of the moon, and gastric juices are constantly digesting their secrets.

They tell me to write what is awesome, and budgies are chirping softly at me from across the room, and they know what I want when I tell them to fly to my hand. We have our means of communication. I do not know what avian words I am chirping back.

They tell me to write what is awesome, and I think of your lion’s hair and eyes and the warmth of your hands like the sun is rising over the Pridelands under your skin. Your mind is beautiful.

They tell me to write what is awesome, and language is only sounds that we give meaning, and what makes us think an exclamation mark communicates emotion? Why do we think extraterrestrials are shaped like humans. Maybe we are shaped like them.

They tell me to write what is awesome, and my mind forms webs in the corners of my braincase. There is gray matter in the luggage rack, ready to fly all the miles to Colorado, and I don’t know what am I thinking, and the world is full of a great many things.

A song plays distractedly in an empty café. Nothing exists without an idea.

The song plays on.