Object Permanence

 

I want to know how things will end. I've heard of the beginning, how grains of pollen fell from the poplars. Then a little choral music, cavalry, bright skirmish on the hillside, a thousand years of this. Here is a flute and here is a steamship. Here is a gun and your grandmother's ring. The devil has seven blue heads, and when we draw him on the inside of the chapel, each one tells a different lie. How many gods do you believe in? How many good men? The story of the world can be told in relation to umbrellas, invented in the seventh century when we finally had enough rain. Don't look at the gun directly. And don't remove the flute from its sheath of ice. The end's already in motion, the end was starting this whole time and today Brooklyn is a beautiful, devastating autumn. Everyone I love is dancing in the plaza. A band plays below the archway, we're drinking wine and rolling up our sleeves to show the soft parts of our arms. When this ends I hope it ends completely. How brave I feel, right now, watching my old friends beside my father and imagining the end as one imagines something certain, a birthday or a doctor's visit. Not like last year when we watched the movie about ruins—I ignored the crusted amphitheater and wanted to touch you. It was February. You wore a long blue coat.   --Madeleine Cravens