The Author’s Corpse
A dreamy excursion on the river Ouse in Yorkshire will be ruined by the discovery of a dead body. Not a very pretty one either, but snagged and gray, swollen in the reeds. “Love couldn’t have asked for a nicer day but what her corpse had done just by existing like.” Which’ll cast the entire day, picnic, fields, river run and river drag all under that pall of the uncanny, as if it were none of it very real, except the corpse. “There’s not enough visible corpses these days,” your grandfather always said, and you always wanted to believe him. Because you do not suffer delusions willingly, and you want the clear canny light of what’s true: in this case your ever-loitering mortality. And so, like a samurai, you’d cherish the thought of your own oncoming death every morning. Even so, it’ll be a mean surprise, no matter how true the reminder, when you see those torn sodden dresses turning in the current, flashing now and again her empty human hand.
WHAT YOUR WEEK HAS IN STORE is a weekly horoscope by Forest Lewis. Get emails saying the new one’s up (and nothing more):http://eepurl.com/UQ0VL
