arcade

Restless, I flee across the dark easement where tar-soaked poles gleam in moonlight under buzzing wires carrying a power that also flows unknown through me. I cut a secret path I fathered stroke by stroke on a hundred summer days, and the grass hisses like snakes between my knees. Just the wind and I descend, leaping down the slope. I see a neon green glow fanning out from an open doorway like a bug light in the night and fingers of fog reaching out. Mesmerized, I cross the threshold into the beckoning room: a narrow arcade, consoles lining the walls. Naturally, I remove my shoes, and the chorus of katydids and crickets crossfades with synthetic beeps and chirps as I venture deeper, each machine greeting me as I pass with an infinite variety of 8-bit jingles. I stare into a pixelated screen where kaleidoscopic colors swirl in patterns wild and so beyond my grasp that I must look away or be transfixed. I admire the carpet, fluorescent and full of cartoon planets and stars. The heat of the machines, or something beyond the machines, radiates out from behind them, relaxing my muscles. I wonder if I am trespassing, but there is no sign of anyone here or that anyone has ever been here. It seems to exist for me, embracing me like a blanket. I step into a larger room with thick carpet and deep worn couches and a glowing air hockey table and pinball machine and skeeball alleys and basketball hoops and walls plastered with posters of unknown bands glowing in black lights and something clicks. A child's pastiche of a cool hangout. For a moment, this place is all that exists. It has devoured the outside world and the heavy future, the fragile past. This place is all that needs to exist. But down a long wood-paneled hallway, I spy the white of a further doorway and the murmur of alien voices and echoing footsteps. I don't belong here. My heart thumps in my ears as I tiptoe back to the outer room and pause in the doorway for as long as I dare, listening, watching, absorbing, letting the neon soak through me and fill me with serenity. Recharging, I sigh and lean into the night. How much longer will it last me, and when will I forget?