Nothing Moves, Nothing Glitters

Imagine you’re on the streets of a yellow-down blown downtown. The rat’s nest smell of putrefaction—no one about, but you and the moles. Nothing moves, nothing glitters. There are canyons and spans of unused sound for the taking—for the making. There are mounds of round bodies, gray and oracular, frozen in time. Nothing moves, nothing glitters. There are cracked trees on the outskirts, brittle and bastioned—grasping at air—cragged in time. Monticules of spent cartridges rusted and dull. Nothing moves, nothing glitters. A thickness in the atmosphere—a metallic tang on your tongue. Shards of bones and jawless skulls stretch from here to the pale hills. You stay. You like quiet. Nothing moves, nothing glitters.

“When our women had all turned into cedar trees they would group together in a corner of the graveyard and moan in the high wind.”

— Lydia Davis / “The Cedar Trees”