Photo by DrStew82, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The stars swirled and kaleidoscopically multiplied over the field as we ducked down into our tent, an action that felt as effortful and mysterious as spelunking in an Icelandic cave. The tent’s inside was warmer than the already crisp September air, but I still found myself shivering from the shroom tea I’d sipped by the fire. “I’m c-c-cold.” My partner covered me with their worn denim jacket. The stars twinkled loudly, everything around us spoke, alive and connected. Within a few minutes I warmed up and perked up and started dancing horizontally in the tent, rolling, rising on the inhale, until *THWACK*
“Ow!” They clutched the back of their head where I’d accidentally kicked them.
“Dude!”
“Oh no, sorry dude! I didn’t mean to!”
With no real harm done but taking this as a sign that we’d outgrown our cocoon, we trekked up to the farmhouse where hippies plinked out-of-tune guitars and the proprietor smoked and smoked and smoked rollies, stubbing them out in a ceramic ashtray of 1,000 more. Under the bare bulb she was an Edward Gorey drawing, all browned fingertips and teeth, pink-white scalp peering from the scraggles of her sparse black hair, dark valleyed undereyes, a black calico dress. She had this terrible hacking cough, and I became convinced she was dying (aren’t we all, but she seemed nearer than most) and I had to leave, stumbling back to the dew and whispering grass and hay and bonfire air.
As a performer and art model, Goldie Peacock spent over a decade bouncing between frenetic movement and absolute stillness before chilling out and becoming a writer. Their stories, essays, and poems appear in HuffPost, Wild Roof Journal, Sundog Lit, (mac)ro(mic), Powders Press, Red Ogre Review, Moon Cola Zine, Fifth Wheel Press, and more, with more to come. They live in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn), as well as online @goldiepeacock.