Cadmium in the Earth’s crust—the bluish grey of the manor house they built after the new
hatreds arrived, but before the purge. Its floorboards creak-proof, the soil of its grounds perfect
compost for red rhododendron, white hydrangea. A nest of new ideas pulse. I focus on any single
star as if it will stir nostalgia for another time, a time unfelt at other times. Instead a chasm
opens, consumes any passion I have left. Rampant emotion disallowed. Joy deceased. Put in
boxes for the attic. The acquisition of sense paramount. I hold crystals for protection, flee to the
ocean, its reefs, my sense of self distorted by what feels like my last desperate gasp. A canopy of
sky blurs through waves of water. My limbs nearly fail me as if I were suddenly elderly, my skin
parchment and tearable by coral. I feel a sparrow flutter in my heart as I recall our last luxuriant
moments when language unraveled like DNA between us. The forest of pines, fields of lavender
a shared memory, rusty and filtered through hazy light. Now I dream of suffering, decay, a
thread of semen, that longing assailed by aftershocks of violence. Aphids in the still breathing
tulips I gather in my arms. They are the flesh I desire, the moment that does not pass. I am an
empire of cells, I think, a hoard of blood waiting to be spilled.