Brimming pools line the rocky shores, covered and uncovered in a hard thin, thin sheet of water, resplendent in spiny purples and sea-green arms. Your ten plastic hearts beat—sort of like muscle against muscle but not really, more like cells thudding against death, a race between comet and tail, too fast to lollipop-snatch.

(A race that you're losing.)

Spectacularly splendid, this destruction – mutilation – is. A menagerie of gaudy colors, backs of prickle, sprawl alongside you, but they're not discarded toys either. They're leftovers of something more spectacularly splendid, (nothing on you), just cut-glass and silver-slipper material, something potentially rubies and not a speck more.

You're being taken apart, dismantled into a thousand-and-one pieces and then some. Once the sea batters again, you'll be completely done. In the end you are only a pretender, too, with a winning streak that's ebbing—you've gambled too much, so please go home now, even if it's terribly far away.

Sometimes rainbows are more than star-studded droplets.

More had been what launched you over the stars and up, up, and—

tumbling down.