"Nooduitgang" by Cole Pragides

Once I visited my old roommate at a film festival on Scheveningen beach where the winning movie was something avant garde and vaguely religious we did not understand. Afterwards we danced to Madonna's “Like a Prayer” within the sand dunes all night, the wind transforming the blanket around my shoulders into wings, my roommate recounting how their friends in Atlanta held their newborn for the first time. We biked miles back into town and laid next to a canal. As we smoked weed, they confessed they might never be able to live in our home country again. I know, but tonight let’ s pretend we’re the loves of our lives, I retorted, swinging a stick to hit another out of the air. Murmuration began overhead, the birds changing phase according to the relative strengths of our anger, wonder, and fear. The sky moved without permission. We let the mosquitoes circle and bite our legs bloody until light. Small volumes of ourselves hung in the air around us as we ignored all the ways to start over. ————————————– Cole Pragides called us from San Francisco, CA. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems