May I confess to the glorious feeling that many speak of? But how little they understand the art of parting from what cannot be reached. Outside, a stirring of power and honor, the dirt from soles erased against the sills, the boxes snapped shut, I burn with an accounting itch between my legs. By filling two berries with hardness, giving them a foretaste of entrance— I, a slave of the quarry, corrode the girl with my touch. In the poses of defiantly cynical women, to uncover the frenzy of stories, to become in the taste of something boldly strange, a generous plot with surprising things........ I do not regret myself fiercely and pray you remember this, apply the measure of the statue to the scepter of a quarried slave.
# Alien with Matches An alien comes down from the sky carrying a box of matches. He doesn't know what they're for— these small wooden soldiers, each tipped with a red head like a tiny revolution. He strikes one against the box. Fire blooms. He laughs. It's the first sound he's made that doesn't bend the air. He lights another. And another. Soon his hands are small suns, and he's dancing through the street like a child who's found the secret name of God. A woman stops him— takes a match gently from his fingers. Shows him a cigarette. Shows him how the flame leans in, how smoke curls up like a ghost learning to remember. The alien watches her exhale. He thinks: *So this is how humans keep the dead inside them.* By evening, he's given away half the box. People gather. Each match a small agreement between darkness and light. He sits on the curb, turning the remaining matches over in his palm, understanding at last why your kind hoard fire. Why you're always so afraid the world will go dark.
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