1. There existed a city.
2. The city was named Golden by its people, for their aspirations.
3. In the center of this city was a two-chambered heart.
4. In one chamber lived an industrialist.
5. In the other, an explorer.
6. They met in between.
7. The explorer liked to find things.
8. The industrialist liked to make things.
9. The explorer would go to places outside the city and bring back the
things he had found.
10. The industrialist would take the things the explorer had found and make things out of them.
11. The people were happy.
12. The city bustled.
13. The industrialist, however, was bothered by the feeling of something missing.
14. Something everyone had gotten used to but that had suddenly and quietly gone.
15. Something huge and important and possibly stimulating to growth and productivity.
16. The industrialist thought.
17. The industrialist remembered.
18. This lack of war is disturbing.
19. She said.
20. It seems there should be war, in a society as magnificent as our own.
21. The people began to feel, if there was not war, was it not implied that they did not have anything worth fighting for?
22. War was not forthcoming.
23. Bubbles burst with discontent.
24. There was malaise.
25. Industry became stagnant.
26. The explorer, restless, set out to find war.
27. War hid.
28. The explorer found war lying in the grass in the shadow of a stone.
29. Off the path to the Mr. Custard’s behind the High School.
30. He found war looping dandelions together.
31. He told war, You are needed.
32. War explained.
33. It’s nothing personal.
34. War was just tired.
35. So many centuries of being the first and last resort.
36. War thought, surely someone could write an essay?
37. A poem?
38. The explorer didn’t think so.
39. War was declared.
40. Against war.
41. War said, This is absurd.
42. He put on his dandelion necklace and ran.
43. The stone exploded.
44. (Why?)
45. (Because it is war.)
46. There were casualties, and assorted mayhem.
47. It is enough.
48. The industrialist said, the head of the explorer a bowling ball in her lap.
49. Clearly.
50. It is enough.

Cami Park writes sometimes with orange roses nearby. The results can be seen in places like Quick Fiction, Smokelong Quarterly, FRiGG Magazine, Abjective, Opium, No Tell Motel, NOÖ Journal, Wigleaf, Staccato Fiction, and >kill author. She also keeps a blog at oddcitrus.wordpress.com.