Two sentences by Danny Evans

When your body was 

withering, 

its metabolic and 

digestive systems

gradually approaching 

a state of total 

externalization, 

organ after organ 

transferred from

inside to 

out, 

supplemented 

by dripping plastic 

bags

 

or fully replaced

by beeping, flickering 

modules, 

I would sit beside you 

on the 

bed, 

struggling to portray 

the materiality of 

a death in the family, 

an immense 

loss, 

observing those auto- 

matic cadences, those 

mechanical sequences 

of signifiers 

the English language 

produced via my passive, 

trembling 

hand; 

still, 

I would probe 

for some singular 

arrangement of 

words, 

pithy and Saxonite 

or multisyllabic 

in their medical 

precision, 

perhaps a 

synthesis of 

the two, 

straining 

to adequately 

depict the particular-

ity 

of 

that hospital scene—

the whirring 

machines, 

the flavorless 

coffee. At

one extreme, 

I would write 

of an absolute 

limit in our 

dialogue, 

a towering wall

through which you 

could only ever pass 

alone, 

leaving our inter-

locutions forever 

incomplete,

some utterance half-

spoken, some 

question un-

answered, 

a cut in 

the discourse;

at the other, I 

would consider 

the concrete 

reverberation 

of your 

articulations, 

the 

physical certainty 

that the sounds 

you outputted, 

from your 

first cries, 

when you were

quite little, 

to your 

very last 

breaths, 

when you were 

quite little 

once more, 

would echo 

eternally, initially 

longitudinal 

sine waves, 

strong and 

defined, but 

slowly decay-

ing, 

finally 

just miniscule 

patterns of 

heat, 

hardly detectable, 

so far from where 

they began, 

bouncing off other 

objects, many 

leagues from 

here, 

asymptotic,

nearing a

condition of radical 

rest, never 

reaching it—

that trace of 

you, 

that sense 

that not just your 

noises, but those of 

every person, 

indeed every 

particle, 

would ring 

incessantly, 

toward some 

projected silence, 

the total measure 

of energy 

remaining strictly 

conserved, varying 

in only its 

formal qualities, 

mathematically 

infinite, or

from a 

different angle,

zeroed 

out

entirely, 

flat as the 

bed 

you were 

dying on.

___

Danny Evans lives in Chinatown, New York City. He recently rekindled his love for prose and verse after many soul-sucking years writing commercial copy. When he isn’t watching Buffy or jamming Magic: The Gathering cube drafts, Danny co-edits Future Imperfect Journal and plays in a bunch of bands.