It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

by Anne de Marcken

Carlos says that names are the most commonplace ritual. “Little prayers,” he says, that connect us to each other and to humanity.

I miss your name. I’m sorry, but I have forgotten it, too. I don’t look for it on the walls. The thought that I might read it and pass it by, just go on to the next name, is terrible. Like meeting you in another life and failing to recognize you.

I miss the way we retold each other the same stories as if we’d just remembered them. And the way we’d play along, asking questions to get at the details we already knew. I think it was so we would still recognize each other even as we changed. Like a snake is the same snake even after shedding its old skin.

have a crow inside me and no one can know. I can feel it all the time. It is like the entire night sky and all the stars and every beautiful sound you can imagine.

I was a zombie even then. Ravenous eater of a world that was already the last of its kind.

What is familiar because I have seen it before and what is just part of a familiar story? What is remembered and what is received?

She says, “Birds fly to the stars, I guess.”

I pretended everything would be okay because it seemed impossible to always be saying goodbye. To blueberries. To the ocean. To ravens. To pelicans and plovers. To the cormorants. To the sunlight on the living room wall at four o’clock. To the sound of you in the next room.