the end of the cigarette i smoked a cigarette today and drank a glass of milk set on a log both i and the milk were beading sweat now and then i leaned the column of the cigarette against a flake of bark that used to generate the very life of this tree now a log i sat on indifferent to me in the yellow sunlight the cigarette was from a yellow pack with a

The stars all started going out You slowly exhaled. The wind crept, twisting through the sloping grass spanning away beneath miles of power lines. From your mouth, the smoke curled over its own shadows, dull blue on thick white under the moon. “What if the stars all started going out one by one–” I saw filaments crackling their last fits inside glass bulbs–“until they all were dark.” Another slow glow as you took another draw–the

Fresh morning sun peered into my eyes as I swung my car onto the main road in town. I cruised toward a church I had never entered, realising—as I pulled between the mustard-coloured lines to park—that I did not know where to go. I stood uncertainly, looking back and forth between the looming church and the sad-looking parish centre behind it. I made the decision to poke my head in at the parish centre, as