Oblivio: Stories and such by Michael Barrish

It’s the last words, the true last. Or it’s the murmurs: the murmurs are coming, I know that well. No, not even that. You talk of murmurs, distant cries, as long as you can talk. You talk of them before and you talk of them after. More lies: it will be the silence (the one that doesn’t last) spent listening, spent waiting (for it to be broken, for the voice to break it). Perhaps there’s no other, I don’t know. It’s not worth having, that’s all I know. (It’s not I, that’s all I know.) It’s not mine. It’s the only one I ever had? That’s a lie: I must have had the other, the one that lasts—but it didn’t last. (I don’t understand.) That is to say it did: it still lasts. I’m still in it. I left myself behind in it. I’m waiting for me there.