I am flipping a coin. I drop it into the snow. I return to where I assume it fell, sink my hand into the knifeblade incision it made, but of course, it has vanished.

Instead, a Dairy Queen.

Inside, a man writing.

It’s a pity Walter Benjamin never got around to writing an anatomy of memory, with attention paid to the way our memories function – or don’t – at different stages of life.

“May I ask you,” I begin sheepishly, “did she .. “ I trail off. There’s an amorphous shadow outside the window. I try to ignore it, but I watch it undulate in the periphery. “Did she, was she in pain?” I manage finally.

“Yes. Kissing spine,” he responds.

“Would death have been better?”

“For me or for her?”

He sits in silence, moves his gaze downward and resumes his work.

Those who survive are anachronisms, and they know it. Most of them live in suburban hells…

I leave the Dairy Queen. I find myself unable to utter anything except a rhythmic, Gregorian alternation of the following phrases:

All we know (sic) is all we are

Horas non numero nisi serenas.

Rebecca R Peel (b. 1990) is currently living in Colorado at 10,500ft. She received her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2013 and has most recently exhibited her personal work in Portland, Jackson, Los Angeles, Toronto, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York City. Additionally, she has self-published four books of poetry to date.