JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS Synonyms for Paradise

JOHN SIBLEY WILLIAMS

Synonyms for Paradise

I’d like to start again. Instead of a car that won’t start & this parody of sky, a working engine, gas, a crisp blue forgettable morning. Instead of that same old forever,

a temporary heaven of breath & sex & pain & verbs. The children it’s too late to have, let’s have them. The chapter where my mother starts calling me by her father’s name: expunged.

If owning a thing erases it, I’d like to start by buying up all the homes I’ve ever lived in. Then everywhere I’ll never plant roots. It hurts me to do it, but let’s let the synonyms

for joy & for grief bleed together, like salt & fresh water, like poles of a magnet. That we all die before we’re finished is no excuse to abandon this worn-out

car by the side of some nameless road, flipped over, only partially on fire. That we should know when we see it is not the same thing as a promise.