Sarah Rosengarten

Extinction Event 

Imagine someone happy. Someone being happy, is what I mean.

All the normal things are there: a small and friendly animal, the dirt, full of life, perhaps
a flower in some favorite color. Perhaps the water, as some people love it and aren’t afraid
of it and don’t find it to be far too big. They say that everything is glowing. Everything has a
voice and everything knows how to sing.

Someone is being happy and you are there, too. And you want to explain yourself.
Yesterday you ate a tomato, forgetting the tyranny of seasons, so you had to stand
there and feel it disintegrate in your mouth, and there’s no one to blame but yourself.
Some time later will be the last of everything and there’s no one to blame.
The thing you’re afraid of? It will happen again.

You think about the person being happy and now your brain is outside your head. Walking around. Looking for a home. Looking for a mouth to pry itself into like an octopus. Running into traffic. You still have all your eyes and ears because unfortunately they are yours and no one can take them from you. Input floods like a high dive into an empty pool. You still have your tongue, responsible for multiple disappointments.

Now it is later and everything has disappeared. It hurt. The crops have failed.
Failed to resist the inevitable, failed to assert their worth, failed
to recognize their value, failed you, and now you are starving. The boiling
lakes are mutilating your reflection and no one is even around to misunderstand
you. Come back, corn, you think, I want to bite you. I miss my chin getting melted
by butter. The ubiquitous thing. Its devotion to infinity.

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Sarah Rosengarten is from New York. She has work in or upcoming in Stanchion Magazine and One Art. She lives in Inwood with two cats.