A vague feeling, an intimation. I’ve seen enough since. I can’t keep track. Some loved ones, some traffic accidents, too many traffic accidents in fact. Some mausoleums, though I still haven’t seen Mao and am in no rush. Neither is he. Loved ones is a misnomer. Surely, we all are loved, somehow? Or ought to be. Near and dear is closer to the truth, if a bit glib. We don’t think of ourselves as furniture, but as living, breathing creatures, slinking about, making a mess of things. It stops though, and as that seeps in, the temperature drops, even as you leave the hospital room in the middle of August and step out into the blazing sun, the sky as large and blue as forever, the birds have slowed in mid-flight and you and everything you love and hate and need is an obsidian arrow-head moving overhead. Set to fracture on impact.
is a peripatetic teacher currently working from Belgrade. His writing has appeared in MacQueen’s Quinterly, Shot Glass Journal, and Otoliths.
