After Heaven

He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you’re dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

A Myth of Devotion Louise Glück 

 
We walk on, treading the bottomless, undulating Treblinka earth, and suddenly we stop. There before our eyes is a yellow lock of hair gleaming like burnished copper, the finee, light, lovely hair of a young girl, trampled down into the earth; next to it is a lock of light blonde hair, and further on we see a thick black braid lying in the brightly-coloured sand, and on and on and more and more. These are apparently the contents of one - and only one - of the sacks of hair that the Germans had failed to ship out. It is all true. The last hope that it was all a dream is crushed. The lupine pods pop open, and the seeds make the sound of countless little bells ringing out a funeral dirge from deep within the earth. And it seems that the heart will come to a half under the weight of such sadness, such sorrow, such anguish, beyond all human endurance.

— Vasily GROSSMAN

Take one away from one and suddenly there’s not much left. The absence of one comes on like first frost: the weakest plants die first, then others, then others, until the world itself bears a whitish ripple from the point of departure outward. I feel for you when you get lost. There are dogs trained to find you under packed snow or in case of disaster. The world isn’t ending. The world hasn’t begun to end. Its least forgivable trait is persistence, the way what you lose forever leaves a hole that can never be refilled. The blindness comes with time or with snow. Everything goes white. Like how a star dies, beautiful and tragic. I’d like to be lost like that, not just vanished but leaving no trace but your thought of me. Your cold lack of me.

Remainder Charles JENSEN

…And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bow and I see, I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I’m not outside my world anymore, and I’m not really inside it either. The thing is, there’s no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me.

A DELPHI

Minus tried to write his own bible. It began, So what, saliva. So what, milk. Iris told us her dad died in space. The whited out vowels rang in my ears. Stupid moon. Stupid burned up blind spot. The not-doctors said his name had burned up. We never knew how it sounded.

The city refused to paint my brother. He banged out his nerves on birthdays. I use years, and they remember. This was in the annex of the indivisible. Escape your leaves, Minus said. I said, I have never used camouflage. It felt so good to lie, all that noise loosening inside me. I like lies.

The burned up hills had grown more graceful. I like hills. They feel like hands.

When Iris wasn’t looking I named her Ruby Foot. Hey Ruby Foot. Her questioning pulled. Why are you always floating? She said she tried to sign my name but the ink was immature. Stupid minutes.

The city wasn’t looking. This city wasn’t old enough to look. The city said, This city isn’t old enough to say.

Minus told me not to breathe when the not-doctors floated by. He sat in a chair and covered his mouth. I hid behind the blinds. This was in the entrance of the opposite pharmacy. Minus’s bible began to speak, Hey Ruby Foot, it streamed. Iris’s water was turning clear, straining itself through her teeth.

In the organs of her father’s owl, Iris heard half of her name. My brother threw a brick at its head. He was helping his cells divide. Iris scratched the city’s face with the keys she had in her hand. Whatever the opposite of prophecy was was what I was listening for.

The city decided to follow me home. Can I ask you a question? It said. I put my gum in the subway slot to keep it from saying my name. Hey Owl Boy, can you hear me? Hey Mister Face, what’s your name? I would like to be called A Different House. I would like to be oxen and bread.

Minus water. Minus air. Behind the house with a tree growing through it. I woke up alone with my feet in the branches. I woke up behind the sky. The not-doctors took the needles out without removing my sheet. Iris was outside holding her breath. My brother had floated away.

The city appointed a second owl to see if my brother had drowned. The owl was sifting the blanks in our herd. The city was clovered in sound. I like noise. Iris likes space. She thinks it feels like snow.

My brother returned from the burned up hills. He contracted a diffident voice. Whenever I asked him a question he branched. He woke up outside his breath.

Minus’s bible was reading itself. All those invisible vowels. Crossing out the sky, the landscape stretched, moving the apex of the so-called. An inverse tone accrued in my tongue. The octave’s egress bruised.

Iris awoke with wool in her mouth. Grass grew over her eyes. The not-doctors thought she had seen the bad wheat. She will need a second reading. Minus’s blindness spread to his hands. His fingers were starting to slow.

Inscribed, blighted, tongue filled with snow. A throat so other I entered my name. The blotted out passages hummed. Beetles bloomed underfoot. This was in the attic of a different house. I slept throughout the stings.

 

Les Rallizes Denudes - Romance of the Black Grief

— Will you stay the night with me and sleep so close that we are one person?
   - No, but I will lay down on your sheets and taste you. There will be feathers
     of you on my tongue and then I will never forget you.— If I weep and want to wait until you need me, will you promise me someday you will need me?
   - No, but I will sit in silence while you rage. You can knock the chairs down any
     mountain. I will always be the same and you will always wait.— It’s so hot here and I think I’m being born. Will you come back from Richmond and baptize me with sex and cool water?
   - I will come back from Richmond. I will smooth the damp hairs from the
     back of your wet neck and then I will lick the salt off it. Then I will leave.— Richmond is so far away. How will I know how you love me?
   - I have left you. That is how you will know.

Litany Carolyn CREEDON

EVEN IF I NOW SAW YOU
ONLY ONCE
I WOULD LONG FOR YOU
THROUGH WORLDS,
WORLDS.

—

Izumi SHIKIBU

 The purpose of the truck is to drag the heart across the ribs. It is possible to wind a heart from certain strands. My heart succumbs to the winter in a drowned valley. It stares up at the perched boulders underneath the blood-sky. I cough, and it flows from the headwaters: this is how it has always been during the Spring, at the delta, everything braided. However deep, a heart will respond to depth sounds from a ship. Ships often have determined their position by means of triangulation with three hearts. Eventually, all hearts find their way to the deepest ocean trenches where they become loosened. The sea collects all their compasses. Though unnavigable, the sea cradles the hearts it its arms.

— The Heart Cycle Seth LANDMAN

SOMEONE MUST HAS COME AND PRESSED
YOUR HANDS APART. WHAT REMAINS IS A
BROKEN VOICE. YOU WANT TO CALL OUT
TO OTHERS, BUT THE TREES ARE WIRED
SHUT AND IT IS TOO LATE. INSTEAD YOU
COLLECT WHAT IS GREEN. YOU FORAGE
FOR BROWN. BUILDING AND REBUILDING
AGAIN IS THE ONLY OPTION. YOUR EYES
SHIFT BECAUSE YOU KNOW WATER IS
COMING. THERE IS A CONSTANT BURNING
AND THIS TIME IT IS ALL UP TO YOU.

YOU ARE THE LONELIEST HUNTER I KNOW Lyndsey COHEN