Man at Desk
There’s a man who sits at his desk this evening, / bearing witness to the end of days.
Illustration by Kat Morgan Listen:
after the drawings of Martín Ramírez
I
There’s a man who sits at his desk this evening, bearing witness to the end of days. The more ink he uses, the less breath left in the world. He writes the word and the buzzing stops, all hives explode into dust, and no one remembers honey. Not even the man who sits at his desk, looking down at the word as if he had just invented it. , he mutters. The awkward sound sputters out of his mouth and plummets because it lacks wings. The man smudges the page. The word, singed into illegibility. He tries to recall its circular shapes, retrace its final journey, but it’s much too late to bring back to the light what has been erased.
