#24

In spring's first dream of rebirth, you came as you, Rich as Rich, the whole of my memory a dictionary of self-referring symbols. The heart asks pleasure, first. But first there was you, and then there was Rich, a conspiracy of silences as yet unfilled. The first of a thousand prayers never futural enough. And my first thought, upon waking, not to mourn, but to sleep. To return first to the tableaux, to what at first seems an ending, but is the mere ground for a cyclical resurrection. Lazarus rising to find himself again, once again, falling. And then rising infinitely toward that first fall.

First, I should blind myself to firsts. Should walk past once and not twice the cafe in which you sit framed by an open window. I should not even walk past once. First, I should blind myself to seconds. Live in that no-time where nothing has yet commenced nor nothing neither ended.

But first, I must learn to read the future: the theatres of night contain parts written only in days to come. I must bolt the door to the past, post a sentinel at the interstice. Say to all those first on the scene, "The first must dwell in foreign lands; the welcomed first, the firstly first, will not be those who last."