“Some time, later,

we shall break the archive seals.

Sitting together then

we shall utter what has never been said before.”

Steffen Mensching – Born in 1958 in East Berlin


Riight. And what a night we’d make of it, hey! You

with your never-meant-tos but hadta, you know. Me

likewise, only now with pally arms slung round each other’s

necks, the urge to squeeze and choke gone from out our hearts.

Be something, wouldn’t it, you and me, the curled-up corners

of the record pinned down by our forgiving fingers. I can

see it, man, the empty tube rolling over the edge of the table and

landing with that hollow pipe sound as it bounces on the hard

stone floor. Directs our laughing eyes to its noise. To its

growing silence. The o of its open end. The

emptiness within, the grins slipping from

our chins. You yelling, hey!

Let’s crush it with

our boots.

Don’t

stand in my way.
Riight, I say. But what a night we had, your nose

colliding with my fist. I guess it’s not as simple as I’d

imagined, gambling on a perfect outcome like this, Steffen. So let’s

leave the seals intact. To break them open is to unwrap

a bandage stuck to a scab.