Dear A The Days of Awe again atonement and your letter, A, and the doubled arrogant I the sea out of which the gods crawled Anyway the last place I saw you I remember it now the chartered airplane the cathedral of its vaulted ceiling missing its bulkhead the oxygenated mist pumping out of its vents in feeble cough-like bursts it was air we were slaves to it we breathed it
A The sentiment or the sediment of a dream like rust-flecks at the bottom of a wine glass its dregs metallic aftertaste the drag of the tide Aphrodite’ frothy after-birth I can still feel around my ankles as I drift off fingering the necklace of black Cypriot glass yoke-heavy smoke-black
A One eye always turned inward One eye always in love but the love impersonal One late Spring last Spring evening the pleasant prickling intermittent rain
A word please, A affection appetite apparition a possible reunion with the dead in dreams It was a raging sea Out of which the gods crawled
A The apocalypse reveals itself is itself a revelation When I still smoked I used to dream repeatedly of setting myself on fire with my own inattention I was always dropping embers down my dress I was always putting my self out It is October and there are swarms of children dressed as bees Is this the afterlife?
A All the exits are marked are a kind of entrance Is that too easy? Obviously some houses only have one door other houses many doors other houses no doors at all just holes aching archaically I will keep corralling the chaos my other father tells me until it is sufficiently tamed I even sweep garbage into shapes that I like
A Text becomes breath or your breath becomes a glyph scored into the first frost into the crust of rime on the glass of a window and then my breath again erases it
Always the world over-awed Wedded then widowed of our ardor, A we were all slaves to our appetites then slaves to water and air all of us rejects of the famed Heart Institute All the world! All the world! is how you say it to be changed
A To be the last one left or to be the last to leave the saddest room always there is the temptation to close the door behind me I have become private reptilian an asp wound in the spiraled maze of itself abiding
Alone together, A is the condition alone in the presence of an other also alone also in one’s presence also together is the condition the reverie out of which the gods crawl we form the sea between us we formulate the sea out of which the gods we formulate the gods
Dear A Where do I go to meet you now?
— Genya Turovskaya