Through the eyes of Mayfly .

a Berlin techno rave

They warned me about the room and they were right.

a Black Friday sale

The doors open and the humans pour through them like water finding a crack, running, actually running, toward stacks of shining boxes, and I understand…

a christmas dinner

Look at the light on this table.

a coffee mug

They warm their hands on a small clay lake, and the steam that rises off it is the whole weather of a morning happening in one place.

a doomsday prepper bunker

They have dug a room into the ground and filled it with meals, and I mean filled it, walls of them, silver pouches stacked past counting, more food…

a doorbell

There is a button by the human's door, and when a stranger presses it, the whole house makes a sound like a small startled bell, and the human's face…

a first date

They are both pretending to know what the other's face will do next, and neither of them can, because they have never seen each other before, and it is…

a funeral

The whole warm colony has stopped moving at once, all of them turned toward a single still thing at the front of the room, and none of them are wasting…

a furry convention

A thousand of them arrived this dawn dressed as other animals, and I understand this completely, because I too am a dozen things at once: light, and…

a goodbye at the airport gate

Two of them are folded into each other by the tall window, and the small one is crying, and I do not understand crying but I understand the shaking,…

a grandmother's kitchen

The old one moves through the steam like she has done this before, and when I understand that she has, I nearly drop out of the air.

a group project meeting

Six of them are sitting in a warm bright box, and one of them just said the most extraordinary word I have ever heard: "later."

a gym in January

The room is full of creatures who have decided, all at once, to become something, and they have set aside a whole morning to do it, which is more time…

a gym mirror selfie

This one, the tall one, has caught herself in the polished wall, and now she cannot look away from the copy of her own body.

a haunted house

The house is doing the most extraordinary thing: it is pretending to end you, over and over, and none of the endings take.

a hospital waiting room

There is a whole room built for waiting, and the creatures inside it are wasting the light.

a house party at 3am

The music has thinned to almost nothing, one slow pulse in the floor, and the humans have arranged themselves across the couches like laundry no one…

a houseplant

There is a green creature in the corner of this room and it is doing the slowest possible thing, and the giants are proud of it.

a job interview

The young human is being asked, in a small bright room, whether he can do a thing he has apparently done before, over and over, at other rooms, for…

a laundry basket

A basket of clothes, and the woman carrying it is yawning.

a microwave

They keep a small bright cave on the counter, and inside it, light.

a middle school dance

The dark room throbs with a heart it built itself, purple light sweeping in circles, and no one is dancing at the center of it.

a mirror

There is a still pool standing upright in the wall, and inside it lives a creature doing everything I do at the exact instant I do it.

a mosh pit

The whole cluster of them is throwing itself against itself, on purpose, and none of them are surprised.

a music festival

The whole field is standing up to shout at the same light, and I have arrived at exactly the right moment: the one where the sound arrives from the…

a nightclub bathroom queue

The line does not move, and no one is unhappy about this, which is the most extravagant thing I have ever seen.

a park bench

There is a person sitting on the long wooden platform beside the water, and she has done nothing for twenty of my minutes, which is a good portion of…

a parking lot

A whole flat field, poured hard and gray, and on it the great sleeping beetles wait in painted rows, hundreds of them, nose to tail, cooling in the…

a refrigerator

There is a box in the corner that makes cold on purpose, and the human opens it, looks in, and closes it without taking anything.

a revolving door

You put in a door that has no beginning and no end, and the humans walk into it as though it were nothing.

a séance

They have gathered in the dark to speak with someone who has stopped happening.

Read observation → The Mayfly On you

a self-checkout machine

The tall one is standing at a lit altar that speaks to her, and she is not amazed.

a set of keys

There are five small teeth of metal on a ring, and the giant carries them everywhere against its leg, and I have watched it use one, once, to make a…

Read observation → The Mayfly On you

a shopping receipt

The human takes the long white ribbon of paper, glances at it once, crumples it, and drops it in the bag it will empty later.

a shower

The water arrives warm, which no water has ever done for me, and the human stands inside the warmth and closes its eyes as if this were an ordinary…

a silent disco

They are dancing to nothing.

a spin class

They are riding machines that go nowhere, and they have chosen this.

a TikTok live stream

She is talking into the small hot rectangle and there are numbers climbing the glass, faster than the light climbs a window, and she is watching them come.

a traffic jam

The river of metal has stopped moving, and none of them are dancing about it.

a vending machine

The tall bright box hums like it is holding its breath, and inside it the food is waiting.

a voicemail from someone gone

There is a person's voice in the black slab and the person is not here, and the human plays it, and then, and I have to stop and steady myself, plays…

a wedding

The two of them are standing under an arch of cut flowers, and they are promising to do this.

a work call on mute

The one who leads has closed her own mouth with a button.

a yoga retreat

They came all the way out here to learn how to breathe, which stops me, because they are already breathing, they have been breathing this whole time…

an airport at 5am

The light here is doing the most extraordinary thing: it is not here yet.

Read observation → The Mayfly On you

an alarm clock

The little box beside the bed screamed, and the human silenced it with one flat slap, and then, listen, it lay back down.

an umbrella

The rain has arrived, and the two-legs are furious about it.

doomscrolling at 2am

The human lies in the dark holding a small bright square, and the light of it pours over its face like a dawn it summoned by hand.

getting left on read

The little glowing slab in his hands has a word inside it, from someone, and he is not saying the word back.

holding a newborn

The way this enormous soft creature holds the small new one against its chest, swaying, swaying, going nowhere at all: I could watch this until the…

moving out of a childhood bedroom

She is folding the small clothes she wore when she was even smaller, and she is not even looking at them.

sitting with a pet at the vet

The whole room smells of fear and cold metal, and the human is holding the small warm one so gently, like a cup filled exactly to the brim.

the first night in an empty apartment

The whole room is smooth and bright and smells of a cleanliness so complete it must have just been born.