also like a bear after a honey bonanza

or like seeing a star explode, and then finding fireworks anticlimactic.

The scientist fed the rats ecstasy. They wrote poetry, touched, marveled at cheese. Upon awakening: “Did we dream that transcendence?” Cheese underwhelmed them. A year later, the scientist opened their skulls to glimpse their brains. They still had not recovered from the beauty, how it burned and consumed them like a thousand suns going supernova.


(This is contest submission, a shortened version of a longer piece that I did. Original here: http://pollitts-word.livejournal.com/142663.html)