skonen_blades

Yes the snake offered us the gift of knowledge
Because he knew it would hasten our death
The Garden of Eden did not happen a long time ago
It is happening now
We haven’t been banished yet
Our expulsion won’t come in the form of a deity telling us to leave
It will come in the form of our garden being no longer fit to support us
The serpent offered us the opportunity to become parasites
And we wolfed that opportunity down
The burden of intelligence
The ability to see what’s in it for us
To look out for number one
To see the angles
To gain an advantage
To screw each other over for a percentage
To climb
To see success as growth instead of stability
To subvert and create and twist
To improve
It’s suicide by auto asphyxiation
As nice as art is, as beneficial as science can be
It’s all masturbation that comes at too high a price
Side effects of the curse
There’s no way out
We will leave Earth because we’re crafty
We will not die here
And we will spread
And humans will be synonymous with cancer in the universe
Destroying with one arm
And patting ourselves on the back with the other
And always eating
Our mouths will consume galaxies
“Only enough to survive”
Will be our motto
As we apocalypse solar systems
Into our glowing bellies
God made us dumb as a gift
The snake made us smart
Now we turn the Garden of Eden into an anthill
A garden of eating
God’s curious about how it will all turn out
But he won’t save us
There is no rescue
This is our show now
And God help the universe


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Identical twins share everything.

Clothes, hairstyles, a secret language, mannerisms, trains of thought, even lovers on occasion.

Not cancer, though. They don’t share that.

Right now, Karen is looking down at Lisa in the hospital bed. For the first time in their entire lives, they don’t look like each other anymore. A stranger might be able to guess that they were related.

Lisa is like a kite now; a bit of skin stretched around a few struts of bone. At first, it seemed a mercy that the cancer was staying away from her brain. Now it seems like a curse that Lisa is cognizant and aware for all of this.

The jokes that she was turning into a supermodel or that she could now marry Jack Skellington were way past being funny. Soon enough, Lisa will be gone. It was no longer a matter or months or even weeks. It could happen today.

Karen is thinking that it’s like watching a mirror die.

Karen understands the word deathwatch now because it’s all you can do. Watch. Just watch.

Now you see her and now you don’t. It’s always amazed Karen how fast kids grow. It’s amazing her now how fast her twin sister Lisa is disappearing.

“Karen?” Lisa’s eyes flicker open.

“Yes, Lisa?” Karen leans forward to look at her sister. She can smell her hot, dying body. She pictures Dali-style watches melting over her sister’s ribs.

“How will I know you?” asks Lisa.

Karen doesn’t need to ask what she means. Lisa means that when she dies and goes to whatever’s next, she doesn’t know if they’ll look the same as they do now. She wants to know that the two of them will be reunited when her sister dies, whenever that will be.

She wants to be able to recognize her twin in the afterlife.

“Here. Take this.” Says Karen. She takes her necklace off. It’s a necklace of thin gold with a pendant in the shape of a tiny fairy. It was a gift from a friend’s child a few years ago.

She tucks it into her dying twin’s hand.

“Wear this. It’s that fairy necklace from Jake’s daughter. Take it with you and wear it when you get there.” She says. “That way, I’ll be able to recognize you. I’ll find you.”

“Okay.” Says Lisa with a big smile. It’s a horrendous thing on her skull of a face but it’s beautiful to Karen. She goes to sleep with the ghost of that grin still on her face.

She dies two hours later.

Before the orderlies take her away, Karen uncurls her twin sister’s cooling hand but the necklace is gone.




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