We have sprinted on our paws from silver fields into the ashen corridors of Office-Max      How early we set our alarms, how grown up,who don the coats of men, despite the heat, who drive on four wheels down Park Avenue pasts the willing lemonade stands, boarded shops giving way to digital malls which we shop on our palms during afternoon break      Darkness is closing in, little time for a meal. The nights are short, these, the ones our forefathers measured with pebbles passed through a glass funnel, The store's a pocket in a jacket outworn, The children are right, the earth is a glowing ember, glowing graphite, in a Vulcan plane of magmas, below an overturned silent sea You fill up your Styrofoam cup; from a leaking coffee fountain, a caffeinated ocean falls on the aisle, soundlessly split, puddle against puddle, drip after drop. Pieces search for matching pieces, bumping up against each other, then parting or like cards, sliding, we pass through scanners darkly, until we are maxed out. How curt we are with one another, who have failed to unite gravity and magnetism Furless hide rubs furless hide, taut with the powers of desire reinvented I crave you as I crave Splenda, the children say, But my tongue desires real sugar and I am left amiss.