Long Night by: Joseph R Rojas Jr, Charcoal, 2019
reaching for nothing and getting something rotten
waking up next to a corpse beneath ground and realizing all this time you felt dead—you really were. it was just an illusion, and you’ve been released. you wonder where it all went wrong and who you really are, whose name is on your gravestone, and who’s with you. but all you get is rotting. and you rot and rot and rot. and nothing ever happens except for the bugs. oh, the bugs. you spare details. you try to scream and find your mouth is gone. you try to move and find your bones have finally been released from your essence. you are nothing but a corpse. and you got what you wanted, what you dreamt about on sundays. you find nothing really matters but the cycle of things: the birth, the growth, the existing, the suffering, the death, and the nothing. you wait to be born anew, to be something other than nothing. but what might be 15 minutes is an infinity when you are dead. and that’s it. just rotting into nothing. into your own private oblivion. like walking into water until your head is beneath the surface, but you just keep going. even when your body fails you, your mind keeps turning. when your brains and your guts are soup, you still exist. you still exist. you keep going, even when they pave over your grave; even when the last descendant dies, you keep going. until you reach for nothing and get nothing. you got what you wanted