What Floats

In the parking lot,

there's a puddle with gasoline on it,

and it's beautiful in a way

that feels wrong.

The light catches the film—

greens and purples and pinks

swirling through the dirty water,

a rainbow made of pollution,

made of the things we leak,

made of what we leave behind

without meaning to.

I couldn't look away.

A child could have seen it and thought:

magic.

Something impossible.

Something that shouldn't exist

but does.

I saw it and thought:

this is obscene.

This beauty built on poison.

This color born from the things

we don't want to touch,

the things we'd rather not know

we're making.

But I stood there anyway,

watching the light move across it,

watching the colors shift

as a car pulled out and the puddle shook,

watching the iridescence

settle and shift and settle again.

Someone had spilled something here.

Left their mark.

And instead of an ugly stain,

there was this—

this terrible, impossible color.

I wanted to step in it

and ruin it.

I wanted to keep it like this

forever.

I did neither.

I just walked away,

and the puddle stayed,

glowing in the afternoon light,

beautiful and wrong,

wrong and beautiful,

until the sun moved

and the shadow took it back.