“Epilogue” by Sasha Leshner “Folded Immigrant” by Jamie Wyatt…………………………………………………………………11

“Epilogue” by Sasha Leshner

I want to begin dismantling the ship still leaning in me like a breastbone tending west—I’m sorry can I say this, that I want to be another city, buried under the ocean’s myth of landscape. You say she reminds you of a city (of me) and I want to turn my wars to crystal. I would have been a zealous soldier. I like to think of myself like that: downy middle-parted hair under a creased beret, a farmer’s rifle blacking my palms, some way to fight for, or at least face you, before your fire falls around me, choosing the story in which I lose.

You’re doing the right thing (you’re telling me so), but I keep asking when my good heart became the fruit you should have been resisting, and how come something better is waiting for you everywhere I’m not—Please, the orange peel spiralling, mold-fitted and resined air, I am here. Suspend me.

I admit it: I can never give up on a young, stupid god. And I was cursed many times over. But an Oracle is all a myth needs to make someone believe they might still become immortal. Forgive me, I was faithful to the man you were with me.

I know we are of the old gods, and this is the last act of our kind, and everything is endgame. I know nothing matters.

But even with nothing, I had to have you in every dimension, like another ancient and forgotten word for stone.