Assembly

by Natasha Brown

He felt very small, perhaps only a mouth. A lip or a tooth or a rough, inflamed bud on a dry white tongue slick with phlegm at the back, near the throat.

I’m greedy for a hundred years from now.

It’s the impulse of a boy who himself understands, in his flesh and bones and blood and skin, that he was born to helm this great nation – upon which the sun has never set. Not yet. It’s bright, now. And the sky is impossibly blue. He’s himself again. Here. At home, and rendered in sharp contrast to me.