6/30 and 9/30

6/30: It Was Safer With Dialog Boxes
we make ceilings to hold the balloons in. the dialog balloons, thought bubbles, the Hmmms, and yeah rights, and we’ll sees, just hovering above our heads. walking our thoughts on a leash, hiding them in air vents, equal parts ownership and denial. We keep suggestion boxes by the office doors to store these bubbles, every meeting requires new balloons. but all the thought bubbles came untethered, floating at first around our heads, nudging the soft borders into dialog bubbles. afterwards, always a slack-jawed moment, a “I didn’t mean to say—“ “oh, I’ll bet you didn’t—“
was that a thought or a talk? we invented glue for these things, and propriety, and physical violence. with all these phrases floating around the building, freed from their people, so many things ended. marriages of convenience, friendships of duty, plans to open a novelty toothpick store. a few things started as well, mainly improv troupes.
At the end of the work day, when the glass doors open, they are smeared with confessions, fantasy draft picks, and complaints about architecture. The workers spill into the afternoon with nothing to say, thoughts all sucked into jet engines. The custodians at the building spend hours cleaning stray thoughts off the wall, receive pre-emptive sexual harrassment settlements.

9/30: Pained Architecture
he wanted everything to fit the shape of the diagrams he drew on a napkin in Subway at sandwich-closing time. he got the shapes from a dream he’d had after a six inch pepperoni-salami-bacon-combo, extra peppercinis, half-gallon of cola and a white-chocolate chip cookie.

there were falling cages, trap doors, and randomly placed swinging blades, but it was the doors he most intended on recreating; pencil-prisms of light and space; each room a new dimmension, galaxy, universe. light years away in your own house. every window a whirling vortex. each step an ‘80s dj scratch, a slide, a collapse-and-rebuild-and-takeoff. the corners, each would hold a world around it, the house both a maze and a meadow.

that, is impossible. we will build you a blue box, like the ones up the hill there, it will have solar power, and if you want, we’ll narrow the doors an inch on either side. the walls are thin so get earplugs for sleeping.

there were also winding staircases, a statue of a giant otter, and multi-colored walls. but he'd known better than to even ask.