Himself

by Jess Kidd

It is a truth universally unacknowledged that when the dead are trying to remember something, the living are trying harder to forget it.

the dead

don’t change or grow. They’re just echoes of the stories of their own lives sung back in the wrong order: arsewards. They’re the pattern on closed eyelids after you turn away from a bright object. They’re twice-exposed film. They’re not really here, so cause and effect means nothing to them.