Nostalgia, Sleep Apnea and a Man Suffocating in his Clown Suit
by Jadon Rempel

the original phonebook was dedicated to the
author’s mother, the yellow pages to her dull
knives, between the pages are pressed flowers
brought home from the funeral, her name was
removed from later editions, when he calls
her number, a man in a clown suit waits
for the ringing to stop

*

tonight it’s the episode where Chachi burns down
Arnolds and nothing’s the same after that, then
a documentary about deaf children and how tiny
insects scream lullabies at each other while they
sleep, slowly I wait for the compressed gas of
gray fuzz from the picture tube, or the room to fill
the rest of itself with morning

*
someone releases fireflies, one by one, into
the dreams of sleeping creatures, knowing nothing
of the outside world, yet nightly, an angel stirs
the blue feather from the window sill, taps her
wand upon our lips as we forget each other
one last time, by morning, someone is holding
a box of empty light