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| Arsh Haque, Class of 2015 |
You called her the Firestarter
"How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!" - Alexander Pope
We were at a coffee shop
on Bardstown Road.
I was Joel and
you were Clementine
and we had nothing
but tapes.
It was our second second date.
You got a vegan cookie
and I sat outside sucking
on second-hand smoke.
Then we walked
through certain
half-deserted streets
and I didn't mention Eliot once.
Then I looked at you
and said
Sirens bellowed, the crashing
roar of a city against
the sky. A pre-Copernican time
and we were at the center
gods aloft a polis
a stone bunker abandoned
in the eighties and converted
into a religious center
Death at every cardinal
direction. There was nothing
but you and short hair
and a palm by my side.
There were clocks everywhere,
ticking like insecurities.
A church, a family, a wall,
Steve Carrell and the
apocalypse. Every moment
a deathnote in a
dirge, and we wore white.
Made it a Muslim
cemetery, where
death meant nothing
but life.
Then a surgeon came in,
cut out a chunk of frontal lobe
and there was dark.
I had no words, nothing but
the red pulsing light.
Before Midnight was over
and it was raining
like your second marathon.
I was alone
a stony throne.
It was four and my hand
was in your hair.
Bad dreams and daydreams
and chocolate waterfalls.
God was by your side
whispering in your ear.
And I looked at you
and said
I give up.
No, I give in.
I...'d give anything to remember
what I actually said. But
I can't. It's stuck
the Big Bang's cosmic egg
explosive and reborn
trapped in a Grecian urn.
So we do the only thing
we can, and become
particle physicists.
Smash little bits of ourselves
together until we're a flesh
and exploding all over
again and know everything
but the words.
A few stars twinkle, less than
we hoped. Caught in the
haze of ash and firework smoke.
The fire's out and we're cold
and you're telling me about
the Firestarter. I get
on a knee for the second time
and blow. The embers crackle
like eyes and with nothing
but breath,
we're alive.
Arsh Haque is a senior McConnell Scholar from Elizabethtown, Ky. He is studying political science.