La Petite Mort Is a Metaphor

Were it a new-made world and the credit cards weren’t full and the need for solace not so great, maybe we could keep loving each other. I remember how it was to look at him in those early days, his face so fresh, it glowed white like a mirror held toward the sun. It was a signpost in the wilderness of the world I’d been lost in, and what happened when our faces met was like being swallowed by an untamed creature that didn’t follow physics or religion—we were like the sun then, riders on the edge of the moon, stakes piercing the whales of our own belief. It’s not a new made world, and the angels sing for no one, but in the small of the night when we hold back our accumulated griefs, the lost jobs, lost children, lost time, he takes my hand, and I am grateful once more to sink below the surface and get as close to death as he can take me.


Laura McCullough | Mudlark No. 32
Contents | Whale Explodes on a City Street