Look! maudlin sky smiles,
Sun puts stupor behind, live;
Light wins the chess game!

On that cold morning, where your breath was painted on the invisible canvas between us, it took two steps to cross our countries' borders. I imagined contact like it was a thing that only occurred between the lines of a fantasy novel, and then I stepped back, back, back, through the gate and under the neon sign.

I spoke to a drifter last night. I forget his name, but his skin was bleached and his hair was crimpy and he said: "The only thing worse than being a muse is living". Then he left, digging his toes into the floorboards on his way out. I'm not sure I'll ever hear from him again.

This morning I stood on a street corner and felt a thousand strangers' shoulders brush up against mine. I didn't move. I drank from exhaust pipes and stole expressions from faces; faceless; facing forwards, eyes cutting against the grain. I had a list of demands on a scrap of wrinkled paper. I must've lost it on the way.

I'm about to drive a shaking fist through a glass screen. You will bruise and bleed but so will I. When the glass is splayed out over the keys, we will lose all communications and our marriage will be reduced to the exposed nerves flickering behind the shattered mask. That's okay, though, I needed to move on anyway.

Forgotten**
by Seyed Morteza Hamidzadeh

O, witnesses of the night
Exile me
To the most distant point of the universe
In the complex area of the vacuum
Moment by moment
I think about my enjoyment
That night
The voice of the calligrapher's pen was heard
And I feigned sleep
I became tired
Time
Is my place to act
I have acknowledged my faith
I shall go to the cemetery
To dig a grave for myself
But,
The weather is cold
It's snowing
And umbrellas
Have put my burial ceremony off.

As the lights went up,
And consciousness creeped its way back in.
He found himself in a puddle of filth,
Mud, blood and other unspeakable things.
Trying to move brought a searing lance of agony,
Yet quite disconcertingly only through half his body.
Looking down he saw the shaft of an arrow,
Protruding from just below his navel.
Thats when he realized why he couldn't feel his legs.
Yet the more pressing matter was what seemed to be
A gaping hole in his chest, that slowly but steadily was leaking his life's blood into the earth. A bitter jolt of fear and panic gripped him, so tightly he could scant breathe. he couldn't remember where he was or what he may have done to come to this. He was young and had so much he would have liked to do with his life. A hitching gasp that turned to a sob escaped his chest as he remembered anne, he would never see her again. Yet as the cold of death crept into his body, he remembered.
Sunny days where he spent time on looking at clouds hand in hand with anne. the warm summer nights made all the warmer be their fire, and when the fires ebbed they lay intwined and would watch the stars as they made their slow steady way across the sky.these are the things that he clutched desperately to himself as he stepped into the darkness that comes to all living things. As the sun broke the horizon and sent its gentle rays floating across the meadow. the warm light found cooling skin, and on his face a small smile remained.

: To the needy willows at the stream... Take the last wisps of life and excitement from me, they are yours, I am but a paper boat, lost in the current; barely afloat. Shy tendril, grasp the manes of dead lions; imaginations' last scions. Tomorrow the light of winter fades slow; left fed to keep dying hearts aglow. It is not the end for those; just indecipherable prose, left for when a mind makes sense.