Spring 2024 - Recrudescence

Rimas Uzgiris

The Café across the Street

—Vilnius, Lithuania

Enwrapped in wafting garbage smells I sit on the sill and smoke my cigarette. Across the narrow street in the Dominican basement lie the mummies: Renaissance-era men preserved by dry, cold air. They knew a bit of everything. So it’s said. Did it help when like the aging garbage truck, they shuttered and spilled their steaming fluids onto the ground? The books behind me climb the walls. There is a bit of everything. Coffee. Tea.

When the wind blows, it smells of corpse flowers. I stick my nose in a book. I become the paper. I become the leaves.

Yellowing like autumn outside.

Words lie on the shelves in thought’s keen air.

Citizens of the plague.

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