Perverse Pleasure

Impermanence By Alex Dimitrov Issue no. 227 (Winter 2018) The first ending. And knowing it would end I wanted another. Lover, summer, pen with which to write it all down. The first disappointment. Which is not remembered but lives in the body. And how familiar it became. To take  the same walk home or lean over ledges,  to say my own name when meeting someone.  Again and again for the last time: the taste of salt in the afternoon. Flowers for no one—alive and sold on the street. What did I think was promised in being? The way a stranger can finish you off. Once only. And never the same after that. After knowledge.  How people are being detained  and shot with our money.  All of which cannot prepare us for death of which I am a student  and which is this country's business: the permanence of others. Even our cruelty toward one another. Will end. And I know  that looking at the night sky is me looking at the past. At light that's long escaped and travels alone but won't always.