A voice comes to one in the dark. She wasn’t even going to turn, look in that direction. Sounds—dull thuds. So incompletable was the world. Expanding from many edges. Waning lights in the distance. A slight trace from each one. Nothing but their seed-sized sips descending from the wires of darkness. Not to follow. Simply lie down in the dark and repeat—repeat to fall asleep—let not everyone love me. Dispel from the mind the habit of mulling over impressions. Deceitful little hunter of impressions. She realized it after many years and wanted to learn to sleep.

He didn’t appear in her dreams any more. He who entered death. Since there was no room left for another experience. The only thing left was to leave his mother.
Now underneath his white shirt no longer is the body that absorbed and reflected the shadow from the sun. He is dead and canonized. Without any definite features.
His white shirt is on the back of the sofa, in the room.
His mother hopes to preserve the scent.
His half-burned pocket notebook sits under a glass sheet. It doesn’t contain any mentions of unmanned aerial vehicles. Just dreams. Like those that young people have. The very young. The young men shall see visions. Says the Old Testament or some sect. As young as a grain of mustard seed.

I forget, but when I remember, I become dumbfounded.

Two tiny lights—those two. Boys embracing each other. Drinking water from each other’s mouths. The second boy never drinks wine, only cocoa and his friend’s snot-sweat. Glides his hand over the other boy’s back, stroking his ribs. Wipes the water on his shoulder blades. Expects admiration. Gets his mother’s revenge on the likes of him. He has tamed him, they’re domestic. His mother is buried in a cemetery far away.
She brought them back from those far-away fields by some last resort. She prayed and prayed without God. Tongue-tied, appealing to whomever she could. The need was immense, of course. She was looking at the jaws of the fields. Where on the thorns the last lives were left hanging. Every autumn flower—a blind beast wiping its bloody snout. Body parts huddled like lambs across the field and in the ditches. Spattered and not numbered. Whose name—or whose hand—in whose pocket. Then fluttering tricolor flags. Their souls sheltered in the winds among the trees of the hill.

How to embrace the snows of this land?
How to assemble?—the assembler asks.

I was trembling when you were there. During those forty-four days my bed was the living room sofa. From which the September, October, November blanket kept sliding down. Then exultation when we lost—for I was trembling.

Then—looking intently, learning who you are.

Forgiving your minor faults. They’ve begun to grow in my eyes with the distancing of the war. Part of my recompense was to forgive. There was nothing else to do, but then, you know, for how long?

Admiring that you’re like two dogs from the same porch; that there can’t even be a secret between the two of you. Seeing in one’s eyes the dishonoring of the other’s body. Seeing how you’ve been terrified to see the other turn into a corpse. And when they told you—Go, collect the corpses—you cursed furiously. You didn’t go. You neither died nor collected corpses. You almost won. Eat each other up. The clattering of young teeth against the other’s young chin. Who’s going to take care of your youth? Who’s going to take care of your love? Your hope resting on me. Bah . . !

Above the head hangs the radiant chandelier’s molecule that casts shadows and wrinkles.

So what if we’re insatiable?

Get lost!

And as if . . . you’ve been caught, my heart? This is about yet someone else, someone who called me “sugar mama” for aiming. And that’s boring, not something else. He loves the girl with beautiful breasts whose fat contains old food. They acted up and didn’t dance with each other. They acted up and danced with me instead. But they were with each other, they weren’t with me. Not at all.

And the one with the pretty throat lingers on the screen. I’m looking. Where would they place the knife? The knife reaches the boy’s neck sooner than the woman. That’s how the country is. The neck hones knife blades, and the chest tests bullet sharpness. What else is left for a woman to do? Mourn and give birth to the one whom you’ll love. What else? How else to wrest them, coax them into one’s arms? For they’re so busy with their youthful task—dying.

And borrowing from an old rhymer—Oh, inconsolable hope and warmth gone cold! Oh, expansive tents of sorrow! White camouflage cloth on white snow. So that you almost can’t tell from above if she’s dead or pretends to dance.

And asking the old dead—is that the end or will she climb up, swing on the tightrope again? It’s as if she knows how to live. As if she’s mad about driving mad. Taking back from death. As if the skin under her eyes hasn’t turned violet already. Thinking, it’s a beautiful color. The color of bells she painted as a child. And the smell of violet, which was different. Forget the violets!

To weep, weep like someone who’s got nothing to do. Joylessly, unfrenetically, saltlessly.

I knew that they eviscerated the entire women’s battalion.

You can’t hide the viscera.

Under any belly.

The boy of fat told me: “You won’t resist if I flirt with you.”
I didn’t say: “I will. I resist the temptation of death.” I said: “All right.”

He put his beautiful hairy arms on the table and blushed when his lover came. The color of his eyes dispelled, the thread of the conversation was broken. He wouldn’t believe that love doesn’t last. He was looking in front of him, but seeing behind, where the girl was; it seemed—a whole life was there for loving. Aw, darling!

His phone sat waiting to ring.

I couldn’t do anything.

To look out of the dark window that shows the inside and to see the boy’s gullet. To imagine placing the knife against his neck and suffering, suffering immensely from the pain. While the devices of the future, like snake tongues, whirl in his head. He thinks the future is there and belongs to him. He thinks love is there and belongs to him. He thinks I am there and will belong to him whenever he wants. I think everything is given and gifted away.

Flickering, fleck, flickering, sperse.

The hunting net on the soggy stones. Not soft sighing neons full of oblique promises, but lamps with old oil down the chasm. One doesn’t even want to talk. Let alone run down the abyss.

And so, who remains? Who remains of them?

Do I still remain?

Dispersed, unable, and strewn in the present.

Who remains of them?

To rely on my fertility and barrenness.

Waning lights in the distance.

Who can mount desire?

Who can push away the cart of darkness?

Who can hang the lamp from the future’s neck?

Who can compete—which one of us is going to kill?

To roar at the indefinite past.

The bee-sized inkpot is on the table.

Who can tell back?