by Chris Martin
~ shafts of light from breaches in a ceiling; blue sky and trees visible through the ribs of beams; plaster peeling like small sails off walls; a patient drip from a pipe feeding an orange gown of mildew on the floor ~
“And even though I thought I was molding this personage that I would inhabit, I allowed myself .... I began wanting to feel what dead was like. To be dead. Not out of despair. Just out of curiosity. To put my mind to being dead. I’d exhausted hate and was on my way – superhumanly, I thought – to containing and nourishing it and so I wanted to take on what I thought was a logical next step: conceive and maybe exhaust death. Outlast it. Again, this is boy thinking. So I learned this trick, this mental trick. I could imagine death, summon it like a mental shroud. Pretend that I was gone, no longer alive, and see what the world, this space, would be without me.”