for you, the social [media] butterfly:

Sounds of a chirping bird fill the air.

They said 140 was not enough, never enough, to say all that needed to be said, but you, creative as you are, use what you need to to get your message across.

It was never about how you said it - about using memorized SAT words to express your thoughts, about using the comma, the semicolon; the period. the em-dash – It was about what you said: the subtlety hidden beneath the lack of pronouns, the stream of conscious thought brought through the lack of a pause.

The sun begins to set. The bird stops its chirps - and the cricket begins.

Amidst the crickets, a leaf tumbles down, down, down, spiralling through its catastrophic fall.

The world spins.

The limit does not exist now, nor did it ever, provided no colours cross these twisted lines.

Paintbrushes lined against the walls, you take them and create your own world - you take them to create the world you never could have lived in.

They call you obsessive, frivolous, uncreative, taking someone else’s world and making it yours.

But they are wrong.

From the moment you took it, the world was never theirs, it was always yours. It was yours, y o u r s t o e x p a n d , you stipulate a norm; yours to destroy.

Outside, the wind blows. The world stops spinning.

A leaf rises once more.

Inside, the fire crackles, leafing through the old volumes, visages charred from memories.

You burn, but burn brightly.

Though now the sense of family is gone, and long lost by this point in time, they are still there, listening, watching, waiting.

They judge your every movement, waiting for the smallest signal to send you one of their own.

Despite the barrage of gestures, you maintain your prestige. Never will you be used for something you never intended.

Still, your lack of change yet constant change manages to annoy even the most patient of them.

They begin to leave, for chirping birds, for falling leaves, but in the end, it is still their silhouette burned into your pages.

The fire begins to die.

Where there once was a great volume, now stands a silent pile of ashes.

They call it the end of an era.

Elsewhere,
bzzt-bzzt.

You come to life once more.

Originally published at seeroflights.tumblr.com.