Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

It’s possible, he thought, that the experience of gratitude was itself a luxury, a topless convertible driven through a rainless life.

Cyrus read on a website once that there was a word for this: sonder. “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Incredible, how naming something took nothing away from its stagger.

If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself—which, because it is inevitable, means nothing.

Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus understood that now, and stepped.