AIDAN FREEMAN
One After
He took black very seriously, he would say, because it is one of only three colors for the faithful. And so no one told him of his yellowing irises. His garden grown over with bleeding-hearts, and no one said a word. He wept and watched movies and when the sun hit the horizon, no sky at all remained. He was one for whom the obvious often revealed itself. Each fiber in his white shirt was unequivocal, his hands twisted open liquid dimensions for days and only the rye-draught could feel them, and interstellar intrepid of the highest caliber. A list of new worlds he had discovered but would never discover again, recently pulled from his desk: My son this morning at 9:09; the sweat I licked from the back of my hand—its saltiness; anything involving broken glass; my own irisless reflection in the gleaming shards.
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