Even the dead water of this black pool has a soul, although still and remote. These people, they can succeed because they are alive. I am barren and extinct. What simulates life on the exterior is a growth like fungus that clings to the skin, shifting and inflating tissue, stretching impressions for what it’s worth. This ascending movement of the hand, the oily glint of the eye, are not life, not at all. They are surrogates, nature moving along reasonable trails. The sparse words randomly dropped, too, are not life. It’s not purpose that I lack — I don’t even know the meaning of purpose — it’s life. I killed something, somewhere, at some point, and I can’t remember what it was. Maybe it was something that was never there in the first place.
