Connie crossed the cold lengths of my mind in the middle
of the night, Had heard about the Apocalypse-to-come
on her portable radio Our contemporaries, now dead
I have traced fault lines toGet to you now that’s why
my language’s allScrewed [sic]. I didn’t believe only
there was static where her mouth was supposed to be

Frequently, we are not the people that we want to be
Someone small and wishy-washy stands in the middle
of the crisis, One-leg on either side teetering only
inches out from insignificance. We have come
to take away the things you love, Connie. But why?
That night Connie dreamed of her radio-God slashed/ dead

The rule of looking: before long everything looks dead
Maybe we weren’t as fearless as we thought we’d be
I fax her (that night): If you don’t want to win then, why
the Hell are you here? Passionate-lessly the middle
of her face sunk into me and drew me but I did not come
closer, AKA four seconds of love. I can admit to that only.

In terms of killing, I always thought that we were only
pretending but Connie had much darker ideas, Dead
weight built up inside her chest Because she came
with cruelty didn’t want it that way, didn’t mean to be
maybe had something to do with her family. In the middle
of the night She just lost herself, can’t explain how or why

Outside her bedroom window: cows, eyes and nothing. Why
do people keep on disappearing and why does she only
care about the ceiling When orange hues orbit its middle
dad smoking in the garage, His office of the dead
Good news makes us so quiet. Maybe I needed end-times to be
as much as end-times needed me. Will it have mercy when it comes

(I hope not) cus I see in sharpness. There’s nothing else to do so I come
back to the same old dreams. They disappoint equally. I can see why
there is dirt now where the purple martins nest used to be.
And what have I become? Another channel suggests there’s only
tornadoes from tomorrow until the next day and the next. The dead
and its many selves go unnoticed, gathering round a limivorous middle.

Hiding beneath the dullness of the everyday, this won’t make events come faster if ever
Soon there’s very little to respect. The storm envelopes us into its eye Why does time only suggest
the hit will be much bigger. A telephone pole goes flying, severing a dead-straight cut into the dream’s open center:
ㅤ/O

____
Liv Archer lives in New York, NY.