Oh anyway it’s not the small desires that eat you up. Those things half-criminal with joy—a tall man’s rakish hair; the wet teeth of the bank clerk when she smiles. (Is it the heart that craves the suddenness of strangers, or the mind? A white page just to lie against, blank of all history for once). It’s not the small desires that make us smaller all our lives. Illicit as they are, perhaps too seldom pounced upon. What eats us up—what leaves us bitter, bitten into, meagre, mean—are the large desires still flickering when small desires have passed. The ones that haunt like childhood’s trees against bare windows, bony gods. The joyless dark we fly toward, wanting what we can never have. And so I mean to make the most of what has fallen in my path. The brown-haired man; the smiling clerk; the branch I’ve broken from the branch. I mean you can. Give in or not. Take something like the juice of too few stars, anoint yourself.
Originally Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 2.
