Kate Greenstreet

The giant takes us down. A man with no arms. Unbreakable. What made today is concordant, transforms the brief decisive phase we call fear. I look to that whited-over part and see a face. Then I look to the black and see the same face. There were tunnels…chambers beneath some of the sidewalks…page after page of places… The last thing you think of. Won’t be my fluffy blonde hair. We have his ear. He was the first boy I knew. The liberation. Which I remember from sand. The pail shape. The whole world’s washed out. These words: take refuge. What I mean by dream in this case is his last dream. And you see no land, you’re that far away. Someone coughs in my first life. Someone must have noticed how like you he is… First you can’t be heard Then you can’t hear Then you can’t dial Then you can’t turn it off You pose a question, I repeat it. And as always with speech, one is blind. As a reflector, as of cloth or thick flecked glass, as slats— You asked though about the self. There were fireflies, and the corn cut to the nubs. The windows shook, we saw a flash of light… then the tiniest feckles of rain after we waited all day.

Men are trading their bullets for worms. “I spent a lifetime building.” We come down from the mountains. We brought eggs, a table, a windowshade. There were times when we couldn’t bring anything. So many people. As you were walking up the hill and I was walking down, we almost passed each other. But I grasped your arm and backed up. You said: “This is what I look like now.”