The New Life
BY SETH SIMONS
i like my brain it is made of phosphorus you will not find it on the fourth of july my brain has many powers i do not use them they are like jellyfish i fear their mythic proportions and affinity for melodrama constantly munched on by turtles dusk-eyed no sense of time was it just yesterday i saw you no it was on the old planet things were better there i mean worse i mean everyone was alive and unhappy digging for scraps of paper glass bottles help i am stuck on this island we said help there is no more island we said how embarrassing to have been conscious of so much pain in my dreams then i was always late for a train father yelling i could not find the right platform there it was pulling away and i was on it and i would have both the new life and old futures that used to be possible grasslands coastlines improbability of finding you here in these dawn-lit ruins horizons i recognize half of halving again gone now imagine getting what we asked for