Deadheading

This Sunday sky sloped petulantly towards dark, unwilling to give up entirely on the weekend's kites and starlings. The cicadas hissed and chirruped until the air was thick with a noise like mechanical bedsprings bouncing for the 4th of July. Lime green and geranium pink seeped into the colour palette and, on the horizon, cowgirls snapped leather whips and cracked bubblegum bullets.

This Sunday girl sat alone on the balcony breathing an air as sweet as Werther's Originals and trying to form candied smokerings with lips in a little round “O”. No one to tell her she was a fool or a heathen, so even her brain stopped bothering. Blowing the last moments of light before the peacock feathers of freedom started to waft her bedward, threatening about tomorrow's workload.

Maybe she wouldn't get up and bother. Maybe she'd lie in bed all day touching herself and giggling and goofing about bucktoothed outlaws. Maybe she'd start walking with unwebbed feet and tramp tramp tramp tramp tramp her way to a new destination. Maybe she'd never open her laptop again. Maybe the sky didn't know it was Sunday. Maybe out there, there was no hot white seam running between pleasure and penance.

Maybe it is time to give yourself up to decadence and drifting, Jane. Maybe it's time to deadhead your responsibilities like summer roses.