
Now nameless I will go seek my death. I enter as the rest have, bumping into those around me, randomly, entropic. But this is no closed system. Faced with two choices, I decide left. The path is narrow, cold. A dead end--
I see myself, the self I was when I was eight, running from mother, her chasing me through the stalks with a bottle of medicine, telling me with her hinting southern voice darling this’ll help you let me blow your nose you have a fever--
I double back, take the right, and for hours (or else, weeks, my beard thickens with each frozen step), I wander through the dark maze. When hungry, I shuck an ear of raw corn, drop to my knees and sink my teeth--
There’s a long straight hall (if one can call a row of barren field between stalks of decaying corn a hall) with no turns. The corn here wilts, limp as a cow’s utters. Too thick for water to reach. Dirt is dust. I delve further--
An open area, the size of my first apartment. Myself, now nineteen, stampedes into where the living room would be. I am master-fate, I am minotaur-breath, I am become death, destroyer of plastered walls. My fist meets white barrier--
My own footsteps, missteps, places I was lost, couldn’t find my way out. I’m eleven and I push my brother down the stairs, I’m walking through desolate streets with Patrick at four a.m., I can’t breathe. I try, find-swallow empty words--
In another dead end, I see my first dog, Binky, named because I was an infant, obsessed. I follow her through mindless turns of the maze, she pleads with me Where have you been why aren’t you here I protected you I protected you I--
There’s my father, from what I remember. He sips a beer, I’m seven, I ask him for a taste. He looks to see my mother isn’t around, says we’re all dead ends. We who kill ourselves dwell here. I grip the glass and open wide--
Corn grows stale. Each day I chart the stars from within the maze, a makeshift sextant borne of corn stalks, try to get a sense of direction. I remember being seven, hiding from my aunt between soft rolls of clothes. She calls my name--
Winter enters the maze. I wear a coat of corn, my hair married to icicles. I see my grandfather Christmas morning. I got a camera that year, it was the last time I saw him. He whistles a tune with no rhythm, he calls me Jimster I called him--
It’s been years. I forget my name, shrug it off like so many coats. Each turn feels familiar. I unexist, I’ve always been here. Find me there, muttering incoherencies to myself, beard sticky with corn juice, running into each solitary dead end--