by Cheyenne Nimes 

It was sliding toward midnight. How we were in this suburban tropical sky. He had come to find us deep in the pages’ aftermath. Who knew what he wanted. What did you think I had in my hand for you? Waterproof pages to fill your bible. Lines one by one you cut out of where the spine met them . . . a minor setback when the New York Times reprints them. Shortly after, they wash out to sea too. Skin slides further south to meet the devil at last. Inside the devil but which one. The normal hotspots. Water masses grow when we turn our backs. Eclipses ran rampant. Things are dated close to expiration now, as if everyone knew what’s coming, like looking through a stone that’s clear to the other side. Back setting fire to fat unoccupied buildings doesn’t bring the old relief. Animals come walking out, you can’t ignore them. You wanted them then and now. But not like this. They lead to the edge, back to where they came from, the face that holds water. The edge of the rest of the world but you can’t see it yet, until there’s nothing left but you, standing around the fire with a dim memory of ice blue aural haze floating up the ocean severally. Things are moving by themselves. Fugitiveness. It’s what can be divided in your consciousness too. They say there is no such thing as the perfect crime, but you’ve never seen that blue tint on anything but that ice. It starts moving away, becoming a smaller and smaller dot. Before the end of this sentence you could be gone. Tense shifts around with the heat. Animal bones, time zones. All these objects can do is reflect the light that hits them. You don’t expect to sleep through the night. You played the numbers and lost. Greenland’s ice was 10 story buildings. Icing. Iced. All bets are off. You’re a quantum fluctuation away from nothing. The solar flares. Trees lifted out. You had no idea. You have to ask how much further. Going going gone. Necklaces of human bone would have shown up in the pictures later if anyone could have taken them. Collecting the collected. Who you were in the last life. It will be on your head. Because it comes down to this: Someone will write the last words ever read. Too late to toss a coin to see who goes. After all, the devil walked lightly, really, his color is bad, everything was covered by a heavy layer of sand but they will ask What did you know and when did you know it. When the sun crosses the line you’ll want words but so much of the story that could prove who’s right and who’s wrong is gone. Even stars scream when sucked into a black hole. It’s going to go on with or without you. Governments who kept it quiet. Blare of CNN runs out empty over the water, a flat round Vegas fountain whose petals scratch the surface of the last chlorine sea. Until you fish them out for copper in pennies to get a bus ticket North. You can get around the danger but you can’t get around the death. Everyone takes off, speaking in tongues, and are found later at sea. Or not. It’s true what they say about how when a body fills with air it waves goodbye.