From “The System of the Falsity of Civilized Loves

     The l’après-mai of our brotherhood is distance, effortless. How did you put it before? This becoming’s like confetti cutting. Weren’t we celebratory and viscous? At times viscous and blithe? Weren’t we reckless and massive? I was sure we were brothers when we rang with certain grief and were sisters when it seemed the source of it was from our insides. We were sisters when any fortune for us precipitated scorn. We were brothers when we earned and sisters obscenely seeking after.

     We spoke quietly in the grove that we had little time and so must give testimony, and you said do not forgive, truly, you cannot forgive in the name of those betrayed here, and even our names fastened together by vulgarity and fable, even you cannot forgive in my name—even when they called out Jackqueline, twice or four times, and I am still vigilant and still gone.

     This meritocracy keeps me in the attention of great trusts, since as hierophants, they believe in a kingdom without limit, so each day I go with the others to the dark boundary of the good.