Hellish Heaven

Glass rivers crawl into a cradle of black honey while the ticking clocks feed from gaping mouths of fish. Houses swim like seahorses, their windows blinking as though they’re fighting to stay awake past bedtime, and the doorways open and close like teeth chewing clouds into rain. A sun the size of a marble pries open the horizon, scattering sparks and sprouts of staircases leading to a nonexistent heaven. The immortal corpse murders the philosophers overhead and mocks the reverence of the irreverent. She dips her hands into liquid gas and plucks out handfuls of feathers that taste that bitter, brutal taste of burned sugar and black coffee. She dissolves into small soft vowels when she speaks sweet nothings. She drinks from a cup of time and feels herself age and grow younger, her skin turning to sand, then to paper, then back to fallen flesh. At the edge of everything, she climbs down into her hellish heaven, trailing behind oceans of origami orcas she never had the chance to see.