cancer has turned you into
an infant. but one that is finally
happy to see me. three seconds of
joy, then,
the morphine eats your next words

you are not you,
but still somehow are. a you
without edges. i hand you a small
turtle I made out of clay and
(here, tears), this is the first time
in my whole life I bear witness
to your utter delight and how is it possible
to be so devastated and so grateful
in the same instant?

where a man was, spirit now is
this you without edges, confused,
delighted, at peace, in anguish,
a child, a man, gone and present,
dying, dead, radiantly alive.

i whisper to you lovely things
in hopes you might hear them later
when you are all light and wise
and you remember who you are,
and I’m you and you’re me and
we’re unbridled ether reaching
out of the depths of the most
perfect love.

"Snow" is the English title of a novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, originally published in Turkish as Kar. The work was finished in 2001 (in December, which is significant), was published in Turkish in 2002, and published in English in 2004. The novel is a contemporary work of what seems at first might be social realism, but that also includes aspects of surrealism or magical realism. The book covers several contemporary topics, but is not strictly about any of them.

Sometimes, I have this dream where I am flying. When I first started doing it, I had the best kind of flight, superhero flight. I could just fly any direction, brake, stop, hover, full freedom of movement in every axis. Want to fly upside-down (feet above head) and backwards, just to see what it feels like? I have. It's funny.

At some point the flying started to change. It went from Super Man to Super Mario. If you know, you know - it was mostly feather powerup type flight,