Billy Behind Me

[asakiyume]

Billy Behind Me, who was a character in the Patricia Russo flash story "Mena, Until," which I talked about back in February, makes an appearance in the second of this trio of short poems.

I like everything about that poem. I have a broken pot whose shards I want to try drawing with (though I have brilliant street chalks, so I don't really have the need--but it's the principle of the thing).

The end makes me think of how we talk with people when we can't talk to them in the waking world anymore. How we talk in dreams. Makes me think of what Ailton Krenak says, and about what the characters say in Embrace of the Serpent, and also of the story The Lathe of Heaven.


Some music for you: Baixi-Baixi

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Oh, I loved those poems. The last one especially, the crows in the cold garden, "It was never eyes that haunted me, but voices."

[asakiyume]

That was exactly the line in that poem that I loved, too.

[sartorias]

I had to skim because the white on black is so painful for my eyes, but I really liked what I saw. I know that painful nostalgia so well. Not a day goes by (mostly nights, but also days) when I am not thinking or mentally talking to someone whose presence in the world is now a them-shaped absence.

[asakiyume]

I so agree with you about white on black! Do. Not. Like. But some people have exactly the opposite feeling so, ehh, what can one do.

"A them-shaped absence" is a beautiful, painfully accurate, way of putting it.

[sovay]

Billy Behind Me, who was a character in the Patricia Russo flash story "Mena, Until," which I talked about back in February, makes an appearance in the second of this trio of short poems.

Thank you for linking both of these pieces, since I had missed the first one back in February.

I have conversations all the time with people who don't exist when I wake. I always assumed everyone does. Some of them I have remembered for decades.

[asakiyume]

It's a precious space for communication <3