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Last Winter, When So Many Living Joined The Dead And Our Prey Became Scarce, I Watched Some Of My Friends Become Full-dead. The Transition Was Undramatic. They Just Slowed Down, Then Stopped, And After A While I Realised They Were Corpses. It Disquieted Me At First, But It’s Against Etiquette To Notice When One Of Us Dies. I Distracted Myself With Some Groaning.

-Isaac Marion

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Last Winter, When So

Isaac Marion

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Last Winter, When So Many Living Joined The Dead And Our Prey Became Scarce, I Watched Some Of My Friends Become Full-dead. The Transition Was Undramatic. They Just Slowed Down, Then Stopped, And After A While I Realised They Were Corpses. It Disquieted Me At First, But It’s Against Etiquette To Notice When One Of Us Dies. I Distracted Myself With Some Groaning.

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And Yet ... But What If ... I Want To Do Something Impossible. Something Astounding And Unheard Of. I Want To Scrub The Moss Off The Space Shuttle And Fly Julie To The Moon And Colonise It, Or Float A Capsized Cruise Ship To Some Distant Island Where No One Will Protest Us, Or Just Harness The Magic That Brings Me Into The Brains Of The Living And Use It To Bring Julie Into Mine, Because It's Warm In Here, It's Quiet And Lovely, And In Here We Aren't An Absurd Juxtaposition, We Are Perfect.

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The Shadows Of The Room Pool In The Lines Of Our Faces, Draining Our Eyes Of Hue. "there's Nothing Left Worth Saying.

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Once You've Arrived At The End Of The World, It Hardly Matters Which Route You Took.

Are We All Just Dark Age Doctors, Swearing By Our Leeches? We Crave A Greater Science. We Want To Be Proven Wrong.

Now I’m Just Standing Here On The Conveyor. Along For The Ride. I Reach The End, Turn Around, And Go Back The Other Way. The World Has Been Distilled. Being Dead Is Easy. After A Few Hours Of This, I Notice A Female On The Opposite Conveyor. She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan Like Most Of Us. Her Head Just Lolls From Side To Side. I Like That About Her. That She Doesn’t Lurch Or Groan. I Catch Her Eye And Stare At Her.

I Can’t Seem To Make Myself Care About Anything To The Right Or Left Of The Present.

I Want To Change My Punctuation. I Long For Exclamation Marks, But I'm Drowning In Ellipses.

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Punctuation Marks

I Can Feel It... The Chance To Start Over, To Live Right, To Love Right, To Burn Up In A Fiery Cloud And Never Again Be Buried In The Mud.

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I'm Not A General Or A Colonel Or A Builder Of Cities. I'm Just A Corpse Who Wants Not To Be.

Came To . . . See You.” “but I Had To Go Home, Remember? You Were Supposed To Say Good-bye.” “don't Know Why You . . . Say Good-bye. I Say . . . Hello.” Her Lip Quivers Between Reactions, But She Ends Up With A Reluctant Smile. “god You're A Cheeseball. But Seriously, R—

There Is A Chasm Between Me And The World Outside Of Me. A Gap So Wide My Feelings Can't Cross It. By The Time My Screams Reach The Other Side, They Have Dwindled Into Groans.

I Think We Crushed Ourselves Down Over The Centuries. Buried Ourselves Under Greed And Hate And Whatever Other Sins We Could Find Until Our Souls Finally Hit The Rock Bottom Of The Universe. And Then They Scraped A Hole Through It, Into Some ... Darker Place.

I Don't Know... There's Something Kind Of Beautiful About It, Don't You Think? That We Keep Living And Growing Even Though Our World Is A Corpse? That We Keep Coming Back No Matter How Many Of Us Die?

All My Life I Have Battled The Alarm Clock, Pummeling The Snooze Button Over And Over With Mounting Self-loathing Until The Shame Is Finally Strong Enough To Lever Me Upright.

It Frustrates And Fascinates Me That We'll Never Know For Sure, That Despite The Best Efforts Of Historians And Scientists And Poets, There Are Some Things We'll Just Never Know. What The First Song Sounded Like. How It Felt To See The First Photograph. Who Kissed The First Kiss, And If It Was Any Good.

We Smile, Because This Is How We Save The World.

But I'm Not Afraid Of The Skeletons In Julie's Closet. I Look Forward To Meeting The Rest Of Them, Looking Them Hard In The Eye, Giving Them Firm, Bone-crunching Handshakes.

I Wonder How Well She Sleeps At Night, And What Kind Of Dreams She Has. I Wish I Could Step Into Them Like She Steps Into Mine.

All The Shitty Stuff People Do To Themselves... It Can All Be The Same Thing, You Know? Just A Way To Drown Out Your Own Voice. To Kill Your Memories Without Having To Kill Yourself.

A Month Ago There Was Nothing On Earth I Missed, Enjoyed, Or Longed For. I Knew I Could Lose Everything And Not Feel Anything, And I Rested Easy In That Knowledge. But I'm Growing Tired Of Easy Things.

I Wish People Were Willing To Dig A Little Deeper Than The Surface Elements Of A Premise Before Tossing One Story In With Another.

What Happened? How Did I Get Here? How Could I Have Known That My Choices Mattered?

My "heart". Does That Pitiful Organ Still Represent Anything? It Lies Motionless In My Chest, Pumping No Blood, Serving No Purpose, And Yet My Feelings Still Seem To Originate Inside Its Cold Walls. My Muted Sadness, My Vague Longing, My Rare Flickers Of Joy. They Pool In The Center Of My Chest And Seep Out Of There, Diluted And Faint, But Real.

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The Sports Arena Julie Calls Home Is Unaccountably Large, Perhaps One Of Those Dual-event 'super Venues' Built For An Era When The Greatest Quandary Facing The World Was Where To Put All The Parties.

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Here We Are On The Road. We Must Be Going Somewhere.

How Do I Appear Unthreatening When Her Lover's Blood Is Running Down My Chin?

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Peel Off These Dusty Wool Blankets Of Apathy And Antipathy And Cynical Desiccation. I Want Life In All Its Stupid Sticky Rawness.

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Soft Flesh Is Eaten By Hard Teeth.

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I Wince At Her Use Of The Word "human." I've Never Liked That Differentiation. She Is Living And I'm Dead, But We're Both Human. Call Me An Idealist.

Differentiation

Regret Is Pointless. I Never Do Anything Without First Deciding To Do It Based On Facts And Feelings, And If It Doesn't Work Out How I Hoped, Oh Well, There's Another Notch On My Experience Belt.

I Hate That She's Hurt. I Hate That She's Been Hurt, By Me And By Others, Throughout The Entire Arc Of Her Life. I Barely Remember Pain, But When I See It In Her I Feel It In Myself, In Disproportionate Measure. It Creeps Into My Eyes, Stinging, Burning.

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I Would Like My Life To Be A Movie So I Could Cut To A Montage.

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I Want Life And In All Its Stupid Sticky Rawness.

It Was Fun, But It's Over Now. This Is How Things Go.

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Every Experience, Good Or Bad, Is A Priceless Collector's Item.

What's The Point Of Trying To Fix A World We're So Briefly In?

Every Time I Go To Sleep, I Know I May Never Wake Up. How Could Anyone Expect To? You Drop Your Tiny, Helpless Mind Into A Bottomless Well, Crossing Your Fingers And Hoping When You Pull It Out On Its Flimsy Fishing Wire It Hasn't Been Gnawed To Bones By Nameless Beasts Below.

What's Wrong With People?" She Says, Almost Too Quiet For Me To Hear. "were They Born With Parts Missing Or Did It Fall Out Somewhere Along The Way?

I Don't Want To Hear Music, I Don't Want The Sunrise To Be Pink. The World Is A Liar. Its Ugliness Is Overwhelming; The Scraps Of Beauty Make It Worse.

You Might Say That Death Has Relaxed Me.

Last Winter, When So Many Living Joined The Dead And Our Prey Became Scarce, I Watched Some Of My Friends Become Full-dead. The Transition Was Undramatic. They Just Slowed Down, Then Stopped, And After A While I Realised They Were Corpses. It Disquieted Me At First, But It’s Against Etiquette To Notice When One Of Us Dies. I Distracted Myself With Some Groaning.

The World That Birthed That Story Is Long Gone, All Its People Are Dead, But It Continues To Touch The Present And Future Because Someone Cared Enough About That World To Keep It. To Put It In Words. To Remember It.

But It Does Make Me Sad That We've Forgotten Our Names. Out Of Everything, This Seems To Me The Most Tragic. I Miss My Own And I Mourn For Everyone Else's, Because I'd Like To Love Them, But I Don't Know Who They Are.

I'm Not A General Or A Colonel Or A Builder Of Cities. I'm Just A Corpse Who Wants Not To Be.

Are My Words Ever Actually Audible, Or Do They Just Echo In My Head While People Stare At Me, Waiting?

It's Rare That I Read More Than Two Or Three Books By Any One Author, Usually Only One.

That's Why We Have Memory. And The Opposite Of Memory— Hope. So Things That Are Gone Can Still Matter. So We Can Built Off Our Pasts And Make Future.

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