Apartment 74 Melissa Upfold Move your hand like sugar through the traffic lights. Too many people are crowded under this overhead and too much smoke is flying up into the atmosphere. We're lighting each star on fire, combusting galaxies and the universe while we speak of Freud, Fidel and Bowie. Every now and then there is a pause while we collectively sigh. There is lightning flickering in the reflections of the store shop windows, and even the gas station is falling down under the girth of moving bodies. I'm new here and slightly out of place - a figure leaning in a languid pose against a telephone pole watching the others move around and through me like foreigners. They are spinning and twisting in an open mouthed, slack jawed drunken stupor. But they laugh so hard I can almost forget tomorrow. All of us wander, en masse, to an alien apartment three blocks southwest. A quiet voice buzzes us up and busses us up three flights of parquet floor and faceless brown doorways. My feet scuff and I drag them in a slow drawl towards the destination. Inside we sprawl in arms and limbs, warm bodies over couches and doormats, over dining room tables with matching chairs and seat cushions. Smoking becomes habitual, shot glasses are topped up and replenished. There are always more drugs wrapped in tinfoil to parlay into collective unconsciousness. We all nod to agree once we have sufficiently numbed ourselves. We will all move as one form, softly breathing loudly exhaling, always stretching our fingers out in hopes of brushing another's. We are so disconnected that feeling connected is assumed wrong. Every wide open eyed smile - an attempt on our lives. We are the aging youth. The drugstore deluded. We were the first to open pill bottles into our mouths, the first to move like moths in a flurry of wings and misdirection. Even this room isn't small enough to make us feel close. Published in Out/Words #1 (view contents)