the milieu

when/what/was
Chapter 10

Q: What was it that happened once?
A: The what that happened once is, not was, a connection in Grin that severed many previous bonds.

Q: Can you tell me how it felt, when what happened happened once?
A: Yes. What happened once felt like a breaking and a joining, like sliding into a warm darkness and [...]

when/what/was
Chapter 9

and this is the beginning: when the world ends
in a slowing and cooling: what color the skies
turn as the sky stops turning: was it a dream
or was it a poem Grin is writing in the end?

Grin and three companions travel to the unlit city by train. The sky turns from rose-red dawn [...]

when/what/was
Chapter 8

Was it a poem, or was it a dream?

It’s probably a stupid question to ask. Probably strikes you as pretentious. Probably annoys you because “it” is so ambiguous. For that, the narrator apologizes on behalf of Grin. I’m telling you his story, or the story for which he’s responsible. It’s not [...]

when/what/was

Chapter 7

What was never no not ever will not ever never ever be.

Once upon a time, Grin’s waking self had a professor who described contemporary poetry as “nothing more than broken prose.” And with that he moved on to other things. Grin’s waking self, believing his professor, deleted several dozen poems written in [...]

A Disaffected Poet.

I opened the door to my apartment.
—–I sat down in my stairwell.
—–I asked for a muse.
One answered my call but I didn’t feel inspired.
She exhausted me just by standing in my room,
her eyes fixed on the untouched paper waiting
—–on my desk.

I merely sat there, mulling over a week full of
—–half failures
—–pyrrhic [...]

when/what/was
Chapter 6

Grin sits in a well. He is waiting for a tomorrow that will not was ever will be.

The well is full of perfume. The perfume is the only trace of Time which Grin holds onto. Perfume makes him remember what was not ever is to be—and he is incapable of preventing that [...]