the seals are singing jagadamba

I have lost a telephone
with your smell in it

I am living beside the radio
all the stations at once
but I pick out a Polish lullaby
I pick it out of the static
it fades I wait I keep the beat
it comes back almost asleep

Did you take the telephone
knowing I’d sniff it immoderately
maybe heat up the plastic
to get all the crumbs of your breath

and if you won’t come back
how will you phone to say
you won’t come back
so that I could at least argue

—“Waiting for Marianne” by Leonard Cohen

“britanick: two guys wasting their degrees.”

otherwise known as “two guys making me laugh a lot instead of write papers.”

So these days we are both silent about what we both know: that at some point, I will take possession of her possessions, dismantle her apartment, and, barring catastrophe, continue with my life for possibly two or three decades without her.

—Irena Klepfisz, “‘Di Yerushe’/The Legacy: A Parable About History and ‘Bobe-Mayses,’ ‘Barszcz’ and ‘Borsht’ and the Future of the Jewish Past

I suddenly felt ecstatic and then realised that it was only the absence of grief

—Sarah Kane’s “Crave”