by Olga Alexander
Still Midnight (After Mountains)
You’re showing me a song. It’s beautiful in a disgusting way. It’s the one with the organs and clocks, you remember the one. I watch you lean back and take a deep drag of your cigarette. It reminds me of the second time I died, you say. I don’t need to tell you that I know.
There’s an urgency and pressure, suddenly. You’re eight years old again, and as usual you have an ear for silence and its interruptions. The old grandfather clock is ushering you forward, somehow, despite being stuck. We are lying on your bed. I remember this ceiling. I remember this sound, as it stumbles out of this imprisoned moment, the sound of something wooden breaking open, like a ribcage, and it is midnight. I turn to look at you and your mouth is open. There is no sound but you are screaming. There was never any sound to begin with, that’s not different this time. There’s no sound but somewhere outside there’s a church choir. There’s an organ pumping away. Wheezing like it’s chasing us down.
It’s still midnight. It’s always midnight but it’s still midnight right now for sure. All the clocks are running faster, sixty-eight seconds per second per heartbeat. The mirror rejects us both and shatters. We do not hold each other we do not touch each other. This is your favorite part, you tell me, and I can tell why. The rising chorus and strings feel appropriately grandiose, predatory. We see the ropes now. That hasn’t changed either. You make a keening sound and a dropped tumbler of whiskey shatters on hardwood. The knives lift themselves. They are here to dance for us again. Again again again again. This is always the same. The windows are dark because there is nothing outside. It is still midnight. I look at you and you are hollow, a vessel – you are a cup waiting to be filled with something but you won’t be. My watch runs faster. It is still midnight. The organs are a siren and they wail and wail as they sink into the ocean. I am an ocean. You are an ocean. There is an ocean between us we named the sky. I tell you I hope it will be different this time and you laugh and it sounds like a sefer torah being torn in half.
The song ends, spent. Its entrails are spilled all over the floor and on our faces, red-rimmed eyes wet with viscera. I say that was a lovely song, thank you. You say you’re welcome. We clean up. We go home. It is still midnight.
Nora Hikari is an emerging poet and Asian-American trans lesbian based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Dream Journal, Small Craft Warnings, and Tealight Press, among others, and her poem “Deer-to-Fish Transition Timeline” has been nominated for the Best of the Net award.
Olga Alexander is an installation artist and painter who resides and works In Manhattan. In addition to her paintings, she currently references her own installation artworks to create miniature sculptural jewelry called Nodes Collection. Her paintings and jewelry can be viewed at https://nodescollectionnyc.com