At Night Go to the terrace and look down. There on the ground dances a fairy. The Moon is fond of her. It tries to impress her with a dress woven together by clouds of silk. She runs away by climbing a ladder crafted from the starlight unrolled from her gown and tosses it out over the sky. In her wake lies the empty stage of overgrown ivy. - Sappy
My Golden Shovel from “Always For the First Time” by Andre Breton, inspired by the parties on campus
Cooling chocolate and a pile of
Roses right next to symmetrical puns
Thawing snowy sugar suffused with guava
Dry branches waving in winter winds
A book of cryptids and a mycelial song
I put close to the nerves on my heart
Hoping pale moon eyes and paper ravens
Can reciprocate the joy of
Being with you
Patchwork made of moon and stars
Resting in the theatre
Music blaring in the night sky
Two voices singing, laughing
Shot in her bed by police
Her heart fizzled out from loving too much
Many times before going to bed I’ve seen her forgetting my name
I see someone else screening my calls
Answering with one-word messages before I finally find out the inevitable
I’m in the shower and she’s drowning
From her own blood, in a lake
My father is screaming, my sister is crying, and I’m making funeral arrangements
Trying to remember what the six primary seasonings were,
where the red beans and rice recipe was whether or not pattern goes with pattern
I want to record our conversations so I have messages to scroll through but I keep thinking about when I get to the end of them
When no one agrees with me
Or sees my side of things
When she finally picks up I remember
I have to stop practicing for my mother’s death
The microbiome is important
All manner of mushrooms sprout
Graphite mycelium merging with
Red parallel lines of soil
Spirals bound to spiral-bound paper
Spinning further with each need to
Focus and distract oneself
And on those festive occasions
You’ll find pumpkins, snowflakes, hearts
Technically vestigial, but still enjoyed
And four corners become eight as the page is
Folded and folded and folded and folded
Until the edges are torn
Piling up, scraps of snow on a paper mountain
Oh
Right
There are some words too
Going below the cold
The snow churned by a hundred
Trails cut through the slush
Into the pink neon on
Black ceilings and white tiles
Taking the time to
Work as a trio, cutting the
Lights, always night and day
Count the phobias skittering across the
Screen: spider, cicada, wasp, mosquito
See how far I can stretch a
Line of paper from me to the
Machines pulling me closer
Walk the rows of pinball lights showing
Rings, monsters, castles, in every
Corner awash in their glow
Balance dragons together on plastic skateboards
In the cool of the tables behind the stairs
And just breathe
There is an extensive gap in our knowledge and the information we were able to gather at this point. However, using context cluse, we pieced together a rough timeline of what happened over the course of the second month of the investigation.
1. A man by the name of Boris Zhaven confessed to providing false information. His reason for doing so is unknown.
2. Lord Eskyil is removed from his position as advisor to the King. However, he remains on castle grounds in isolation.
3. A battle on the border of Tokavsk and Arkia results in heavy Tokavskan losses.
4. A small fire destroys part of the records pertaining to the investigation. The fire is put out quickly and no one is injured.
The final event is the most important, as it hampered both the investigation and our work. However, we believe we have sufficiently accounted for that gap through independent research as part of the agreement we have with Tokavsk and Your Majesty. The next few parts contain information we acquired directly with the help of an interpreter, and while we acknowledge that the verity of what we were told is uncertain, the conclusion reached at the end of our time in Tokavsk supports the facts we were given. Additionally, we dealt with the individual who attempted to interfere with our work and adjusted our report accordingly. We have drafted a shorter report on that matter than need not be mentioned here again.
