All I Want Is Not To Die

So Many Words Get Lost. They Leave The Mouthand Lose Their Courage, Wandering Aimlessly Until They Are Swept Into The Gutter Like Dead Leaves. On Rainy Days You Can Hear Their Chorus Rushing Past.

And It's Like Some Tiny Nothing That Sets Off A Natural Disaster Halfway Across The World, Only This Was The Opposite Of Disaster, How By Accident She Saved Me With That Thoughtless Act Of Grace, And She Never Knew, And How That, Too, Is The Part Of The History Of Love.

The Clarity Was Startling And Samson Wondered Whether He Was Imagining These Moments. Not That They Hadn't Happened At All, But That They Had Been Embellished By Details From Elsewhere, Fragments That Survived The Obliteration Of Other Memories, Vagrant Data That Gravitated And Stuck To What Was Left To Remember. But In The End He Rejected This Idea. The Memories Were Too Perfect: Take One Detail Away And They Collapsed Into Disorder.

A Couple Months After My Heart Attack, Fifty-seven Years After I'd Given It Up, I Started To Write Again. I Did It For Myself Alone, Not For Anyone Else, And That Was The Difference. It Didn't Matter If I Found The Words, And More Than That, I Knew It Would Be Impossible To Find The Right Ones.

Franz Kafka Is Dead. He Died In A Tree From Which He Wouldn't Come Down. "come Down!" They Cried To Him. "come Down! Come Down!" Silence Filled The Night, And The Night Filled The Silence, While They Waited For Kafka To Speak. "i Can't," He Finally Said, With A Note Of Wistfulness. "why?" They Cried. Stars Spilled Across The Black Sky. "because Then You'll Stop Asking For Me."