John Edward Lawson

1.

The first time somebody contacted me with fantasies about my death I thought to myself, "Wow! I've made it as an author."

Of my first disobedience, and th’ fruit

A cornflower’s merciless expanse marred by ivory cataracts, illumination flitting and gliding across, across, compelled by the force of a child with a golden stone skipped on the river overhead and breaking its surface with impetuous determination. Blue virgin no more for this shimmering penetration, this thoughtless intrusion pressing between the veils hanging overhead. It rests on humanity with all the weight of a mausoleum, all the protection of a wax house. The veils are growing gray with age, soon to run black. Air slowly ruptures free from the lungs of the collective dead, swarming angry and circulating through nature’s beautiful ruins, stirring leafy columns of enough variety and splendor to stitch Roman eyes closed with phallic envy. Not the icy granite and marble of polished resting places, but the thorny precariousness of life.