Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

“I want to make great art. Art people think matters.” “Good. Keep going.” “Isn’t that enough?” Cyrus was exasperated. “Cyrus, everyone and their mailman believes they’re an unacknowledged genius artist. What do you, specifically, want from your unprecedented, never-to-be-repeated existence? What makes you actually different from everyone else?”

As if to incentivize the whole ordeal, the body offered you dreams. In exchange for a third of your living, you were offered sprawling feasts, exotic adventures, beautiful lovers, wings.

But tomorrow would be better than today. For the first time in ages, she really believed that.