Sublime

comely,

“Ruth

All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun.

The live bough bends. The dead twig snaps.

sepaciating

Shelley was something of a sensualist. He relished touch—pressure. How would it feel, physically, to take this creature apart?

You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world, you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night’s fever dream that I have finally woken up from. I say you are the smoke-wisp memory of a flame, thawing ice suffering under an early spring sun, a chalk ledger of debts being wiped clean.