Negative Space

by B.R. Yeager

The worst part about knowing anyone is knowing only that tiny sliver available to you.

Some nights I’d whisper to God. Vague, grey prayers. I’d tell myself he was listening, even though he never whispered back.

You fear the worst because you’d be stupid not to. You’ve been fearing the worst for so long, anything else is just unthinkable.

“I shouldn’t have gone in the woods.” “I know,” I whispered. He rolled his head forward. “I’m still out there.” His eyes narrow slits. “You’re here.” Slowly, he smiled and opened his eyes wider. “No. I’m out there.”

My father. My father is a tree, roots pushed deep through the floor. He stretches his branches to the sky in agony. He has no face but I can see his teeth clench, clench until they break. His body dangling rigid, somewhere outside. His body filled with wasps. It’s all there, beneath his bark and inside his rings.

I never really knew whether my parents loved me or not. I guess I knew later. But those first seventeen years only ever felt like tolerance. They knew I was their fault, and because their god ordered them to love me, they held back their knives. But I knew the stories of fathers who cut their children to pieces, so most often I tried to make them feel like I wasn’t there at all. Most often failing completely.

The most important thing anyone can know is this: just by existing, by inhabiting this planet and space, we are put into communion with entities we cannot begin to understand, in manners we cannot begin to understand. We float on the surface of an unfathomable ocean, and though we may stick our hands, our feet, our faces beneath, we can never go much farther without drowning. Once made aware of this, a man can no longer see the Earth as a sphere. It is a serpent. It is a length of rope, forever curling around our persons.

Mom said she was proud of me, but her eyes screamed WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME and I went to bed clutching my ulcers. Like it’d become necessary to kill others to feed myself, to clothe myself, to heal, patching my wounds with their hair and skin.

And I left knowing it would ruin him. For decades I’ve told myself I had no other choice, but now I know that probably isn’t true. Sometimes I tell myself I was only a child then, but usually I know that’s also a lie.

All the world is water. It’s always been. It took me eighteen years to drown. My body bloats and inflates, pushing in a direction I only know as up. My skin breaks a surface I never knew was there, the water slipping off my knees, chest and face. I breathe. Dying becoming who I need to be. The world is bright light, and it’s inside me, too. I’m there right now.

I laughed. “So what’s the moral?” Another pause, and then: “One day, no one will ever know you were here.”