Nick Flynn

Leaning from the platform, waiting for a glimmer to braid the rails the eyes of the action hero cut from the poster all that concrete pressing down A fine edge gleams around your body as if it could be contained The way each finger is licked, dipped in & rubbed across the gums until the teeth go away Even my hands kiss you A night broken down into grains If you find yourself lost, dig a cave in the snow, quickly you need shelter against the night A candle could keep you alive the engine of your lungs will heat the air around you, someone will miss you, they will send out dogs You must be somewhere, right?

Beneath all this I’m carving a cathedral of salt. I keep the entrance hidden, no one seems to notice the hours I’m missing  ...    I’ll bring you one night, it’s where I go when I hang up the phone  ... Neither you nor your soul is waiting for me at the end of this, I know that, the salt nearly clear after I chisel out the pews, the see-through altar, the opaque panes of glass that depict the stations of our cross —Here is the day we met, here is the day we remember we met

Children under, say,ten, shouldn't know that the universe is ever-expanding, inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies swallowed by galaxies, whole solar systems collapsing, all of it acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning the rules of cartoon animation, that if a man draws a door on a rock only he can pass through it. Anyone else who tries will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds should stick with burning houses, car wrecks, ships going down—earthbound, tangible disasters, arenas where they can be heroes. You can run back into a burning house, sinking ships have lifeboats, the trucks will come with their ladders, if you jump you will be saved. A child places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus, & drives across a city of sand. She knows the exact spot it will skid, at which point the bridge will give, who will swim to safety & who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff he will not fall until he notices his mistake.

Here again at the edge of what was, the river held back by the stones it has carried, the knife in your hand brimming rain. Inside this day without beginning or end, it cannot stand still inside you. One day I'll leave—not you but all this—this hunger that pushes each wave.