The God of Endings

by Jacqueline Holland

the mind, that imbecilic machine of associations,

a hideous time, when the terror of death suffused all of life and against it people had little recourse besides their own dark imaginations.

My father turned to look at me and reached out for my hand, and the understanding that passed between us in that look and in that touch was so painful and clear that I could have believed that people did not need words to speak at all.

those poor, sad creatures dragging themselves along the ground, passing their days laboring and fearing and suffering until death. Too clever to live in peace, too stupid to live well.

Youth, it seems, is a state of diffuse abundance, while death’s approach concentrates.

A Mozart concerto—the music of optimal cognitive function

ordinary people—vremenie, or “the brief,” as Grandfather calls them

The most buzzingly alive a person will ever be they are at three, four, five years old.

Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow it all slips away to puberty and acne and angst.

She arrived on the first day of school in an actual tiara

Really? a 3 or 4 year-old?

THE North Atlantic is a lunatic ocean,

willow branches, the beard of Mokosh’s dark lover, Veles.