| We said a prayer for the rats and fleas as the plague abated. We laid a wreath for Justinian. The streets of London were no longer smoke-choked, just smoking, and Rome started to smell more like Rome. At least whoever remembered “before” said as much. In the last days of the plague, the days that followed the days that had been called “last,” we made a sport of showing up at restaurants where we had never been beautiful enough to get a table, just to see if people still ate at tables, or if the food tasted like anything. We appeared at the homes of our favorite people to see if they were around, too, or if they had changed, or if they could be unchanged. We moved slowly through the halls of near-empty museums, each of us indistinguishable from the art, to be touched only with the eyes from a safe Kantian distance. As the plague’s grip on our lives slackened, we slackened too, like a body pretending it can will itself back into sleep. We prepared for travel, arranged our documents, scheduled shots. We packed—clothes, books—and packed—the spider plant with all its apostles, anything that might spoil in our absence—and kept on packing. It didn’t matter that we had no idea where we were going. This time we would be more careful to leave none of ourselves behind. |
Benjamin Paloff’s poetry collections include And His Orchestra and The Politics; his third, vs. Computer: A Theosophy, will be published by Archimboldi in 2026. The author of several nonfiction books, he makes a living as an academic.
