Aurora 2024

Sara Allard

there’s also stubborn little seedlings dancing all over my eyelids. They explode out of their safety-yellow cocoons like a firework, only to get snatched up by clumsy fingers that don’t know what to do with ‘em. Fingers that are caked with dirt or covered in blotchy black nail polish. I try my darndest to grab the seeds before the thieves do, but my old hands can’t keep up. When it’s time to open for breakfast, I start worryin’ that I never woke up. Every time I stop to take orders for tea, there’s seedlings twirlin’ outside the windows. Every time I stop another grabby brat from pickin’ dandelions off the trellises, I feel a shadow blocking out the sun that’s supposed to make them really pop. It’s only when customers start gawkin’ at the ceiling that I realize it’s not my imagination. Up on the roof sits a girl with dishwater hair and slobby clothes, holdin’ a bundle of dandelions in her hand. She blows their seedlings into the wind by the dozens, and no amount of yellin’ at the sky makes her stop.

And it’s the goofy grin on everyone else’s face that makes me decide I’m livin’ through a nightmare after all.

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