Here, The World Entire

by Anwen Kya Hayward

An offering from someone who has everything is worth nothing. An offering from someone with nothing speaks for itself.

The thing about grief is that it pays no heed to the rules we have constructed for ourselves. Grief commands us to act. It demands recognition.

The thing about the absence of solitude is that it makes loneliness much harder to bear.

And I think those words again, trying them on like new clothes, seeing if they fit: I have been ruined. I am unwhole. I am undone.

Atlas' burden is only the world. I wish that were all I carried on my shoulders.

I wish I were weighted down by nothing but the elements and the spaces between the beginning and the end.