There were these guys, all standing in a row. Loose, languid. Backlit figures, shoulders slouched just so. Not Greek, not marble: loose. Yeah, just–relaxed. Their hips moving across the room, their fingers long and lucid with cigarettes, which flared red once–a constellation of red stars burning like mouths above a dark bar–and then went out. Smoke rings exiting their mouths like–like cars, maybe. Conversations drifted by. It is a sad and beautiful world. Yeah, it’s a sad and beautiful world, buddy. I couldn’t get comfortable: I kept watching how they were standing, gathering, dissembling. Their arms as slack as night, or cradling their cigarettes like they were half-moons, half disappearing in the passing pale clouds of their hands. I asked the girl next to me what she was doing. Just watching the light changing, she said. There was no light. We were inside. A room full of figures practicing standing, leaning, drifting. Watching the walls like they were some sea, or a black-and-white beach with planes taking off one after the other. I asked the girl where they were going. Shhh, she said. Watch the light. It’s disappearing. We smoked some more. The room’s horizon got darker and darker. Until it was just a line of darkest rose, like a sea that’s blushing into evening. The room was blushing. The moon-cigarettes got shorter and shorter. We ran out of cigarettes. The red mouths above the bar, burning like stars, went out one by one. The figures were slimmest silhouettes, dark as night. Time tells you that it’s time to drift, one said. Then drifted.

–Quinn Latimer