#the immortals

Tear down a whole palace for him.

Kill her attackers and leave them in a fountain.

You know.

When I was old I became close to my death. He slept next to me snoring like a freight train, his bony elbows digging into my ribs; once he left a filament of saliva on my wrist. We ate together, equally voracious: he snatched a strand of clam linguine from my open mouth. Evenings we walked side by side in Flatbush lost in our symptoms, reciting them like prayers, my kneecap my shoulder the small of my back, each determined to be the one who suffers. Still we were not immune to a crocus pushing up through a sidewalk crack—in fact that beauty seared us like flame; a child’s voice thrilled us singing the alphabet forwards and backwards. We both felt like exiles among those tenements, both of us had stopped calling friends, we wrote only the briefest of notes to our remaining families— we’d each entered silence. Still, when he was gone to the bathroom or to the lobby to pick up mail I felt a surge of panic: Am I immortal? Will I have to live forever, alone in this vast city?