Big Bang, by Dhwanee Goyal

The lady on the bus has eyes all over this city,
big and blue and leaking.
She’s one of those supervillain types, although
afterwards she tells me that she would like to be forgotten
eventually. She’s called Joanie, and says nonsense like
being forgotten is an after-effect, and quite different
from forgetting yourself. I know who I am, they
continue, and I feel compelled to ask them to
stop. I do ask her, over the hubbub of the mall cafeteria.
All these hours with them and their dumb sweaters,
I’ve begun seeing wildfires on
the rooftops. She goes panting, I follow everywhere,
keep imagining tragedies that will never occur.
Even otherwise, these days, I take everything quite literally.
I accompany my brother to the supermarket
after he jabs Never see you again at my
See you later. I hug all my friends before and after
school. Joanie says that they wished people would
stop noticing them, says that it is different
from being forgotten. I think Really? Again? I say
Never mind. On and on she goes: Both are words you cannot
register and All these voices you cannot hear.
I take in her disheveled eyeliner, sweatpants, smile, before
they go back into the eyes of the paintings that
follow you everywhere. I might as well
tell everyone that I’m dissolving. That there’s
gas leaking through my house right now, that it’s my fault,
that I won’t be able to smell it in time.
I try to reach there, and my home
goes up in flames, with it everything I love.
Like the universe ending, just like that.
There’s no one around, and all the water in the world
still wouldn’t be enough. Later, I cover my eyes
and lay on the ground, search opportunities for reflection, if any.
There are almost no nights left. Every voice I try to hear
keeps fading into the horizon.

Dhwanee Goyal is sixteen and getting through life one donut at a time. An editor-in-chief of Indigo Literary Journal, her work appears or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Foglifter Journal, Variant Literature, and more. Find her on Twitter @pparallell.