the space above my ears.

The Barest Minimum

I'm not sure how to begin this one.

I know most people address our days as something left better unsaid.

I agreed for a minute there, because, let's be honest, it made sense.

Parts of them were ugly.

Parts of them looked like the months after someone important has left forever and saying their name out loud feels like blasphemy.

It's so suffocatingly tense, even the elephant stomps out of the room.

You weren't cruel, but you needed too much and the crown of urchins looked very nice on you.

I feel bad for thinking it.

You know what, actually, fuck that.

It sounded good in theory, it still does.

It was exhausting to let you care about me.

You wanted me to be yours so I became yours and I hated every minute of it because I felt like it wasn't mine to keep.

The entire process was a rejected organ transplant.

You would say stuff to me and I'd say stuff back and that's the only important fact.

Hey hey look, it's okay, baby, I don't always want to die.

Do you know how that sounds?

The scene shifts and it's so cringeworthy, that cliche dramatic-irony bit.

The funeral service has begun and now we're sitting side by side in a pair of folding chairs.

We're inside, but we may as well be outside.

The place is cold and lifeless as the body in the casket, and the inside of the temple is just the same.

It's the type of quiet that makes you want to sink into the ground and be absorbed by the soil.

I picture that for a second, tulips blooming from my rotting corpse.

You read my mind and grimace, which is fair.

Each to their own, I suppose.

I think it's cute.

The woman giving the eulogy sounds like she's speaking another language.

The walls are the color of dust and death.

It's so morbid it makes my stomach hurt.

I see how long I can hold my breath.

I crack my knuckles, sticking my hands in my pockets to muffle the noise.

I try and fail at origami.

I notice a hole in my pants.

I poke and examine it until a loose thread reveals itself, crooked and limp.

I grab the end and I pull and I pull and it grows and grows but the hole stays the same size forever.

I know I should be grateful, but what's being insinuated?

Will change ever come?

Even in the settings of utmost carnage and war, the days will be the same, exactly the same.

Time is passing and passing and I'm in front of the casket looking down at a face that is so familiar but I can't pinpoint who it is.

You say it's me.

Figures.

The trial comes later.

There's no witnesses.

The judge is a shepherd; I think his name is James or something, but he wasn't in the Bible so nobody cares.

The prosecutor is a Nazi.

The jury is all goldfish.

You are defending me but nobody can hear you over the cawing of the stenographer;

She is a crow, by the way.

You tried, but we'd lost before it even began.

The gavel hits the chisel and the statue of some forgettable emperor falls to the floor in pieces.

That is the verdict.

My name's been officially nullified.

With tears in your eyes, you insist there are worse things than being nonexistent.

You're so pretty and I almost believe you.

We repeat that sequence again and again in each circle of hell until we run out of numbers.

I don't care that much.

You start to care a little less too.

We're different because you're just tired and I'm empty.

The first time, the very second my name was nullified, so was I.

We knew it, you just couldn't bring yourself to face it.

Therefore,

You didn't.