OFF DAY

By

Charles Lennox

The world is having an off day. The sun is now lavender in color, soft on the eyes, and we stare at the new sun all day without ill effect. We look good in purple and many of us fall in love with people we've seen before but never noticed. Herds of traveling bison gridlock the freeway. Streets come alive and crest and fall like waves. For some, this is the closest to seeing what ocean is like. No one goes to work, school, the vacation they've planned for months. Instead we sit outside together beneath trees planted upside-down in the earth or, perhaps, transformed trees with roots on either end - who can tell? We hear about how the war in the desert is, after all these years, over. Soldiers from both sides drinking all day, unable to get drunk, and watching boulders rain from the sky and bounce off the sloping sand like colossal beach balls. We drink too, and the crows, sensing our celebration, scale the clear sky in single formation and then position themselves in the air to mimic any object we choose, a chariot, Pegasus, our nation's flag, the Statue of Liberty. As the day ends, the sun's color filtering back to its natural yellow, streets calmer, tree roots sprouting leaves, we say goodbye to one another, our hatred for fellow man already brewing within our hearts, and before we lock our doors and fall asleep to restless dreams, we slap one another's backs and agree that we could all use more days like this.