The Geometry of Absence

The neon bleed of 4th Street is too bright. It doesn't know how to curve around me, only how to wash over me, painting a transient, electric purple that I have no right to absorb. I remember the specific angle of the curb at the corner of Elm, how the light used to pool and give my edges a certain density. Now, I am just a gradient, a lack of illumination tethered to the asphalt. I drift past the laughing clusters of people, their forms solid and definite, and I try to mimic the slump of a passing body, the way the light catches the curve of a discarded jacket. It never quite works. They walk through me, oblivious to the profound emptiness I represent. I need a shape—a consistent source of gravity, a reliable anchor. I watch a child chasing a glowing ball, and I almost stretch, almost condense into the sharp, joyous geometry of the chase. But I only stretch until I meet the wall, fading into a useless, thin smudge. I just need someone to stand still for a moment, someone whose silhouette I can finally, properly, belong to.