After the Pause: Fall 2019

Page 27

John Sibley Williams

Origin of Illumination

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” ― George Orwell, 1984

Because the sky doesn’t burn bright enough, we make morning out of teepeed matchsticks & rough red scraps of flags & our bodies pour like gasoline over it all without need for spark. Everything we hope to forget incinerates. Perfect plots of ash like those new-dirt graves no one’s yet wreathed in flowers. Across it, so many small holes. Cigarette burns? Half-healed stars? Hinges: opening or closing? History has no business here, in a country famished with glimmer & guilt. Or tomorrow, which looks the same. Right now let’s simply relish our end, how much hurt the light we’ve forged can cause.

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