This Is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar

Notes and sums and new engines remain behind. They take people and art. The math will burn, the engines melt, the arches fall to dust.

So I change your shape in my thoughts. It’s amazing how much blue there is in the world, if you look. You’re different colors of flame: Bismuth burns blue, and cerium, germanium, and arsenic.

But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive against and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me.

It was, I confess to you here, a smug thought: that I died by my own hand, and was raised by yours.