of solemn hours—
It could not be me
Who is awakened
By my own moan,
By the remembrance
Of your lips.
The page below lay revealed, writhing in turn, new lines flaring up with brief farewell heat. Not wanting to see any more, I dumped the rest of the papers in at once, and their dead white weight poured into the small grimy sink like cement. Nothing happened for a full minute; then smoke began to curl lazily at the edges. From the mirror above the sink, I was observed by an unfamiliar girl with a determined dash for a mouth, her gaze not bitter but lit up with a ferocious joy. I found myself hiccuping with sobs that sounded like laughter, or else laughter that sounded like sobs. There you go, Apollo, a nice little sacrifice for you—the sum of my entire existence to this day, all erased, so I can start anew, so I can create something real, something alive. There, there, can you smell the sweet rot of toy words, of dead words, rising like cloying incense to your heaven? And if I believed in you, and if I could pray, what would I ask in return? To be granted the strength to persevere, first and foremost—not to swerve from my path, not to lose my desire to capture the world bit by bit, word by word, until, in the fullness of time, my small words would number so many they would become a door opened into life as I had known it—opened to anyone who would accept my invitation to walk through. And maybe, lowering my voice to an embarrassed whisper, I would ask to meet someone new—someone I could love fully and forever, my soul mate, my missing half, if I believed in such things. And oh, I would ask you to punish the man who humiliated me so easily, in passing—you would likely find this request the most pleasing of all, for are not the gods ever thirsty for vengeance? But one should be wary of wishes fulfilled and prayers miscarried . . . And as the pages smoked andflared and crumbled away, I wondered at the savage-eyed girl in the mirror, then forgot all about her, thinking of a poem I would start as soon as this tedious rigmarole was over. God’s Book of Complaints and Suggestions, I would call it; it would be a polyphony of prayers, curses, and regrets, layered and contradictory as life, bits of it tragic, bits of it funny, bits of it violent, bits of it—
The fire alarm blew up above my head.
Without thinking, I turned on the water, and the room vanished in a hissing cloud of acrid steam. The alarm screamed and screamed. My door was flung open, someone ran in, and, coughing, I watched him pull up the armchair, climb to the ceiling, and unscrew something with manly efficiency.
The noise stopped.
“That’s better,” he said, stepping down. “Lucky I was passing by. What on earth were you doing?”
“Destroying compromising materials,” I said.
“I understand,” he said. “Dirty photographs.” His tone was weighty with mock seriousness, and his eyes alight with laughter in his face.
“I wish,” I said. “My life is nowhere near that interesting.”
“Burning down the dorm seems interesting enough to me,” he said. “I’m on my way to a party.”
“Constantine’s?”
He nodded.
“Watch out for the ouzo, it’s deadly.”
He pushed the armchair back to the wall.
“You should air out the room properly. Need help cleaning up?”
I turned and considered the sink, choked with soggy gray paper.A charred, half-drowned shred was plastered against the enamel, a few lines still legible.
You can escape this maze if you grow old in it first.
The windows here are transparent walls,
Your fingers stick with the blood of childhood games,
And Ariadne’s thread is a ball of chewed gum . . .
I became aware of his standing next to me, looking at the corpse of the poem, and flushed, and smeared it quickly into wet soot, and hid my blackened hands behind my back.
It had just occurred to me that I remembered every last word of my vanished poems by heart.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.”
Our
It could not be me
Who is awakened
By my own moan,
By the remembrance
Of your lips.
The page below lay revealed, writhing in turn, new lines flaring up with brief farewell heat. Not wanting to see any more, I dumped the rest of the papers in at once, and their dead white weight poured into the small grimy sink like cement. Nothing happened for a full minute; then smoke began to curl lazily at the edges. From the mirror above the sink, I was observed by an unfamiliar girl with a determined dash for a mouth, her gaze not bitter but lit up with a ferocious joy. I found myself hiccuping with sobs that sounded like laughter, or else laughter that sounded like sobs. There you go, Apollo, a nice little sacrifice for you—the sum of my entire existence to this day, all erased, so I can start anew, so I can create something real, something alive. There, there, can you smell the sweet rot of toy words, of dead words, rising like cloying incense to your heaven? And if I believed in you, and if I could pray, what would I ask in return? To be granted the strength to persevere, first and foremost—not to swerve from my path, not to lose my desire to capture the world bit by bit, word by word, until, in the fullness of time, my small words would number so many they would become a door opened into life as I had known it—opened to anyone who would accept my invitation to walk through. And maybe, lowering my voice to an embarrassed whisper, I would ask to meet someone new—someone I could love fully and forever, my soul mate, my missing half, if I believed in such things. And oh, I would ask you to punish the man who humiliated me so easily, in passing—you would likely find this request the most pleasing of all, for are not the gods ever thirsty for vengeance? But one should be wary of wishes fulfilled and prayers miscarried . . . And as the pages smoked andflared and crumbled away, I wondered at the savage-eyed girl in the mirror, then forgot all about her, thinking of a poem I would start as soon as this tedious rigmarole was over. God’s Book of Complaints and Suggestions, I would call it; it would be a polyphony of prayers, curses, and regrets, layered and contradictory as life, bits of it tragic, bits of it funny, bits of it violent, bits of it—
The fire alarm blew up above my head.
Without thinking, I turned on the water, and the room vanished in a hissing cloud of acrid steam. The alarm screamed and screamed. My door was flung open, someone ran in, and, coughing, I watched him pull up the armchair, climb to the ceiling, and unscrew something with manly efficiency.
The noise stopped.
“That’s better,” he said, stepping down. “Lucky I was passing by. What on earth were you doing?”
“Destroying compromising materials,” I said.
“I understand,” he said. “Dirty photographs.” His tone was weighty with mock seriousness, and his eyes alight with laughter in his face.
“I wish,” I said. “My life is nowhere near that interesting.”
“Burning down the dorm seems interesting enough to me,” he said. “I’m on my way to a party.”
“Constantine’s?”
He nodded.
“Watch out for the ouzo, it’s deadly.”
He pushed the armchair back to the wall.
“You should air out the room properly. Need help cleaning up?”
I turned and considered the sink, choked with soggy gray paper.A charred, half-drowned shred was plastered against the enamel, a few lines still legible.
You can escape this maze if you grow old in it first.
The windows here are transparent walls,
Your fingers stick with the blood of childhood games,
And Ariadne’s thread is a ball of chewed gum . . .
I became aware of his standing next to me, looking at the corpse of the poem, and flushed, and smeared it quickly into wet soot, and hid my blackened hands behind my back.
It had just occurred to me that I remembered every last word of my vanished poems by heart.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks.”
Our
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