A Brief History of Your Absence

by Spencer Eckart

No Revisions/Unsplash

They held a parade in your honor, but you hadn’t vanished yet. You were still wolfing hummus, still putting on one odd sock.

Everyone kept applauding anyway. They mistook your doubt for performance art.

The mayor read a speech about how brave it is to disappear.

Later, someone said you were just hiding in the crawlspace beneath yourself. They brought blankets. They waited all year.

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Spencer Eckart is a hybrid poet with work published or forthcoming in Ghost City Review, Apocalypse Confidential, t’ART Magazine, and elsewhere.