Our Numbered Days

by Neil Hilborn

Here and Away I’ve been hearing that the world is ending. I’ve heard it so much these days that I can either completely ignore it or never leave my house again. That is, if I actually left my house for things that don’t directly enable me to keep my house. See, I’ve been thinking about driving nowhere. I’ve been thinking about becoming a box inside a locked room inside a dark house at the dark end of the street. I wanna go away until I’m gone. It takes so much less energy to not exist than it does to exist and get burned. I’ve been burned so much I’m not me anymore. I’m a stupid puppet version of me. I’ve got strings that lead to nowhere. Nothing is pulling on me. I wish someone would drag my hand out of hiding and sign my name on the dotted line. There are days when I cannot find the sun even though it’s right outside my goddamn window, when getting out of bed feels like the key in the doomsday machine, so on those days, this is what I tell myself: whatever you are feeling right now, there is a mathematical certainty that someone is feeling that exact thing. This is not to say you aren’t special. This is to say thank god you aren’t special. I too have kissed no one goodnight. I have launched myself off tall places and hoped no one would catch me. I have ended relationships because suddenly I was also exposed. But isolation is not safety, it is death. If no one knows you’re alive, you aren’t. If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, it does make a soun...