The problem was, I didn’t have the right investment in nothing. I didn’t put myself in the place where nothing was. There was this sense (don’t hold it against me) that nothing was there waiting for me and I was perched at the starting line, blank to applause. The gun went off. It was silent.

The problem was, the cavalcade of information saw me as a receptacle. No—I said—I’m a space. There’s nothing in.

The cavalcade doesn’t understand the profound barrier of light.

On my worst days, I fear I don’t either. But then I thrust my fingers in the ice box and remove them when they are blue. Then purple. Red comes back.

Empty! Have you ever seen a blank parade?

The truth is as extensive as the halls that keep it from punching the clock. It needs the money. We all need the money. The halls are white, and the pipes are what convince you of your motile aptitude.

Together, all of us, drenched with the absence that was invented far earlier than us: it is a painting I can imagine painting, but only in a prelapsarian face-down binge on God.

If a tree falls—silence.

If you see someone who knows me, tell them I’ve disappeared. Tell them the truth.

We are the council appointed by coincidence to keep watch over the void. Good luck it is us—someone else isn’t fit for the job. They’re so material. They’re so take what you can as if it’s there. Everything I own is metal so that when I touch everything I own I am reminded of my body’s tendency to surrender heat.

Are you familiar with sinuses? Are you familiar with what ventures there and stays? Late at night seems like a perfect candidate for emptiness—until it is late at night and the whole world seems to want to crawl in. What world? That’s what you have to ask yourself, over and over before you drift to sleep.

And dream of the white pines without roots, without even land to hold them. Without even trees to wish to be held by the land.

I’ve been there. It’s beautiful. Nothing! A gripless waterfall. What I don’t know is why I came back. Or to whom.

What I do know is that I touched a pair of fingers afterward—just two, warm. They were like a chain but not of metal. They were like a tree but not dead. They helped me to imagine—to remember—the empty place. If I remember right, they curled a tentative inch into my hand.

Dear God: do us the favor of vacating what you have painted over, white.

Dear Last One To Listen: when they begin to see through me I wish only that my shoes are double-knotted.

I go forth into nothing humbly.
I climb the rope ladder down, down. Head down, and the

blood. The blood. It starts so closely to resemble nothing.

The eyes are the first to go invisible. See through them; unsee the rest.