Long Way Back to the End
by Paul B. Roth

Low Detection

           Imprisoned by thrown-open doors and windows, you wait. Who passes by, who doesn’t notice you, who never notices you or ever comes for you, is a much larger part of your life than you theirs.

           Venturing out on occasion, you fear tiny rainbow prints on new fallen snow will lead you underground between two overlapping roots that were once the legs your mother at the last moment crossed before carrying you full-term to birth, and yet, you’ve never had such problems following these same rainbows in the dark where snow’s melted into one calm winter streambed after another.

           Every time you return, you ask for silence and its unspoken promise of solitude. Lightbulbs tightened into place yet loosened by the human vibrations spiderwebs cushion, burst with so much light that there’s no space outside your own body in which you’ve ever been seen.

           In the future, you’ll take your darkness elsewhere.