Intermission One

Sleepyhead Susie woke up in the middle of the night.
She called 911 because she felt lonely.

Intruders

Susie made the long journey from Bed-Stuy to Buffalo. She cuddled with coffee cups and snacked with snickerdoodle cookies on Elmwood avenue. The early afternoon sun made her shadow shrink and body temperature rise. But OH! That shadow sure was wearing the cutest dress to ever lay across the grey asphalt when she crossed Lexington avenue.
Neighbors sat on their porches, huddled close together and smiling at the air particles.
She counted 59 skips from the cornerstore to her mother's apartment building.
She sensed something odd about the neighborhood she had grown up in.
Something unsafe. Eskew.
Lanky crouched figures crawled around the gardens. One had a large black shotgun. The end had been sawed off and Susie peered into the abyssmal barrel.
She told her mother to quickly open the building door and lock it behind. This task took CENTURIES. The robbers towered over them. Susie had to use all her weight on top of strength to close the door.
Susie heard them stomp over the other apartments. They threw all the furniture, books, papers about. She rushed to lock all of her windows and doors.
The second lock on her front door broke.
The hinges disappeared.
The door did not fit in its archway anymore.
Her bedroom was empty. She had moved most of her belongings to Bed-Stuy. She was sad.
Her bedroom door would not lock.
The porch door stayed wide open. The key did not fit the lock anymore. It had changed careers.
The back door hinges had a fight with the wall they had become attached to.
They separated a whole two feet from eachother.
Never spoke again.
Susie took her two Macbooks and climbed down the front porch columns to her neighbors.
She called 911. Nobody picked up.
She called 911 again. The operator REFUSED to believe this emergency.
The neighbors still smiled and stared at air particles.
Susie could only stand outside and wait for the intruders to finish destroying her home.

Buffalove: Dream Number One.

Once upon a time, Susie was in Buffalove. In late August right before school started, she noticed that her legs had grown super long. She was a Daddy Long Legs! She stretched her new legs out and skipped all over town, towering over the tall green lampposts and trying to balance along the painted yellow street lines.
She said "hi" to the Lake Erie seagulls, "hi" to the fat bass, "hi" to the little people in their rowboats, and "Why, HELLO THERE!" to all the working folks on Main St. buying flowers, fruits, and vegetables from the Farmer's Market because it was a Thursday. They looked up at her from the subway tracks and waved their plastic bags up and down.
She leaped toward the blue McDonald's (the one with the mechanical mannequin playing a baby grand piano in the middle of the restaurant!) and squeezed through the doors. Her spider legs were bad at grabbing change, so the manager gave her a FREE four-piece Chicken McNugget box with Sweet 'n' Sour sauce. She carried it out of the store on her furry back and decided to have a picnic on the sidewalk. BOY! The light from the sun at high noon made the sparkly micas in that quartz granite just POP out at her. She floated in glittery air.
The clouds were so white they were whole rainbow clumps dispersed throughout the wide sky.
BRIGHT-ORANGE-COLORED-PLAYGROUND-SLIDE-PLASTIC BLIMP WITH THIN WHITE ROPE! FOR SUUUUUSSSSIIIEEEEEE!!!!!!
Her best friend's head peaked out from the bottom, motioned her to wrap her legs around the dangling string and climb to the sky.
They floated high above downtown, among the liberty towers, over the Central Public Library, towards South Buffalo, and down William St. where she could see her cats crawl and pounce around the bushes outside her house.
Those grain elevators just GLEAMED!
The bridges smiled at Susie and held the roads' hands.
The oak trees' branches gave them thumbs ups.
They could just reach out and hug the whole Buffalove skyline.