Pale River

Lucca Fraser

I remember two other times when you strangled me to death and all that shit. I remember echoes on the Pale River, struck with a jolt of agony. Oh Barbarian! I remember acrid sheaths of caresses or the bites of a kitten moist at your heels! (It opened up horizons from which no one could escape.) I remember you doing nothing, but writing the rest of it down.

I remember wishing I could have less bliss. I remember you taking a bath in a now entirely empty room after a thirty-second class. I remember the one person who loved you the minute you let her in here spraying dust unspooled on the futon. I remember it covered in leaves! I remember there were dark, savage-grey brambles, old black swirling pastes hanging free from the wall, black black orange horizontal piping leading out on dowel ends, old black black orange old black, starving. I remember starving, engaged in work so trivial it gave me a powerful urge to experiment. I worked all night without any work at all. I stole a blood plume sting from a putrid tomato. I died.

There always are those who have walked through the woods, watchlessly watching on, you know.