Vignette No. 2

Neil deGrasse Tyson sits on a park bench. Lance Armstrong rolls by, curled up inside a large tire, on the pavement in front of him. He is waving a miniature Brazilian Imperial flag. The treads of the tire are glyphs, constantly changing form and position. Some of the glyphs are left on the pavement, all of them Latin characters: THE STALKS DO NOT RETURN ONCE THE PAPYRUS IS MADE. A humpback whale moves in front of the sun.

Twin joggers, both male with shaved heads, stop in front of Neil deGrasse Tyson.

"Ceci n'est pas une vignette," the one on the left says. His left eye pops out of its socket and falls to the ground, rolling, and rolling, until it bursts into a billion tiny shards of light. The shards transform into butterflies; the butterflies are gone in an instant.

"They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind," the one on the right says. He climbs onto the shoulders of the other, and they cartwheel into a sea; and on the other side of the water they rise and their hands and feet make tracks at the shores of infinity, stretching onward, toward and past the horizon until there is no difference between heaven and earth. The waters slide over the sand and the tracks are gone.

A butterfly lands on Neil deGrasse Tyson's open hand. It looks at him accusingly. He stands.

It rains. It's rained a lot lately.

/*This is a companion piece to Vignette No. 1.