The Spear Cuts Through Water

by Simon Jimenez

They fought because it was the easiest language they spoke.

“No matter how long you do something,” she said, “you can always fuck it up.”

you understand that whatever sleep the man was having, it was a bottomless one, many leagues beneath the surface of the Sleeping Sea—trapped in a dream as restless as wolves.

But you know as well as any guilty party that no one thought stands alone. That there is a city within you, populated by both high- and lowborn beliefs, interjections, prayers, rantings.

The Purple Elk. The Silver Monkey. The Red Peacock. “Creatures of myth.”