Negative Space

by B.R. Yeager

and it was fine because I could finally feel how little impact I’d ever have on the world.

I couldn’t look away. I wanted to live inside it.

I pretended I was already all the way gone, long buried far beneath the earth.

They knew I was their fault, and because their god ordered them to love me, they held back their knives.

I’d look at my face reflected in his dilated pupils, my features somehow taking on the ways I had long tried to imagine them.

I wasn’t there anymore, but I could still think and remember, and I wept and wept, wanting to be all the way gone.

I’m glad I’m alone. With all of my dreams.