I wake up with no memories but my mission.

I wonder only briefly at the empty spaces in my mind. Who needs memories when you have purpose?

So I sit up and feel the crisp, white sheets slide down my arms. I'm in a bed, in a pristine room. Gauzy white curtains billow at the edges of the glass wall opposite, and I push the sheets away as I look out over the city.

The floor looks like wood, but it's smooth and cold on my feet. I put my hand on the glass. It doesn't fog under my fingertips, and I leave no prints.

The sky is hidden under a flat, white sheet of cloud and the light is diffuse. It makes the city look flat, a perfectly lifelike drawing. A photograph. Something that once was real, but this is only a likeness of it.

It's all glass and metal, and I don't know if it's familiar or not. Nothing feels familiar except my own body, so does that mean I've never been here before, or is it only gone with the rest of my memories?

I step back so I can find my reflection in the glass, superimposed over the city. She's vague and doesn't look quite like me, but she smiles when I smile and mimics my wave.

I find clothes in a closet, and dress myself in a shiny grey jacket and billowy white pants. There are boots—tall, sleek, and baby blue—that fit me perfectly.

I tie up my hair in the full-length mirror hung on the back of the closet door, studying my face as I do it. This reflection is clear, and looks like me, but I don't know what I've done, where I've been. There's only this place, here, and my mission. My purpose. I tighten my ponytail and smile.

The building beyond that room feels empty. I cross a mezzanine with a glass railing and evenly-spaced potted plants that could be real or fake. I walk down a glass staircase.

I don't know where I'm going, but I don't need do. I know what I'm here to do, and I'll do it, one way or another.

The city feels more real when I step out into it, but there's still an eerie quiet in the air. The buildings here are tall, and the street is wide, and when I stand in the middle of it and look, all I can see is an endless tunnel of metal and glass that vanishes into the sky.

Walking down the empty street, I find my eyes watering. I don't know why. Tears run down my face, and a sob shakes its way out of me.

Maybe my body is remembering something my mind can't.

But what?

For a split second, my resolve wavers.

At an intersection, I find an abandoned vehicle floating askew. The sliding door isn't working right and bumps loosely, sliding repeatedly partway shut and open again.

I knock on the metal hull, and listen to the echoing ring die away.

I climb up through the broken door, the vehicle rocking under me as I walk along it. Whatever stabilizing mechanism it had isn't working, maybe because it's broken, or maybe just because the vehicle's turned off.

I try to turn it on, but nothing changes.

So I leave the vehicle and keep walking. I go into some of the buildings. Everything's still, until a breeze comes and pokes at my pants and the ends of my hair.

One of the buildings has a metal door just inside the entrance, with a screen on the wall beside it that I tap on without expecting anything.

It lights up.

I scroll through a list of locations, and then set it back to the original one. 92 Quadranth Street.

When I go through the door, that's where I am. I find the number on the building, and a street sign, just to be sure.

I explore a few more places through the door, out of interest, but everywhere is empty and much the same. When I find a park, I stop and walk there instead, off the path and into the trees. Surrounded by them, I could almost pretend there was no city at all. But even the trees don't feel quite alive anymore.

I'm struck by another fit of sobbing when a memory slices through my head. Or through my chest, maybe. Now I remember not only my mission, but how to achieve it. There's a place I need to go, and a button I need to press.

A button that will end the world.

I consider this as I walk there. It's a long walk, so I have plenty of time to consider.

I begin to wonder if I'm confused—this world feels dead already.

But no. I know my mission. I'm here to end the world.

Maybe because it's too far gone to save.

I walk up to a sliding glass door. It's supposed to be automatic, but nothing happens even when I wave my arms at it. I have to push it all the way open, fingertips squealing as they slip across the glass.

There's a big open space beyond, with sleek benches and sleek potted trees and a sleek elevator. The doors won't open, so I take the stairs instead.

At the top of the tower, a room. I pause to lean against the wall, breathing heavily from the climb until my heart rate slows.

I push open the silver door. But before I can step into the room, I'm struck by another memory. It's big and powerful and makes me gasp and fall to my knees. The pain of my kneecaps striking the floor is only enough to distract me for a moment, and then I'm lost in the deluge of memory.

By the time it's over I'm lying, gasping, on the floor.

I remember everything.

This isn't the end of the world at all. This world died long ago; I have come to the beginning of time. The beginning of my world's time, anyway. I haven't yet been born, and I won't be born yet for years and years—centuries, in fact.

This time when I start to cry, I know why. I cry for everything I've lost—a whole world, given up. I sacrificed my future so I come here and kill the world. So I could come here, and erase this dead, empty space so new life can begin.

I sacrificed the rest of my life so that the start of my life could be possible at all.

Gathering myself together, I get to my feet. The tears course down my face as I step toward the console, a wide sweep of chrome counter covered in lights that have gone out.

In the centre, a simple red button. As I step closer, I find that it's not what I expected, and yet it makes more sense, somehow. The button isn't made of plastic or metal; it's organic. It's soft and slightly veined and I can see where it has caused a tiny crack in the console where it grew through the metal.

The world is practically asking me to end its misery.

I reach out and hesitate, my finger hovering. I think of my face, not my real face but my reflection in the window. I think of the empty, echoing streets.

"Thank you," I whisper to the old world, and I press the button.

the red flower drips

like fireworks down the wall

as the gun clatters

extra words for word limit

Just as the new year creeps in on

Accelerated heels as always,

New years resolutions fall away as fast and

Underneath the false promises, your

Arrival here still means something;

Run to catch up with

Your life, if you dare

I've always been sparing with my affection

and I suppose it's from my fear of being judged;

if I admit to nothing, I'll face no accusations

and no one can say I have bad taste.

My discernment is valuable, and I try to never give false praise

so I can always be trusted; partially for your benefit,

and partially for mine.

Religion, like morality, is personal.

It should be a structure to support each of our connections with divinity.

But misused, it becomes just another form of oppression.

It's funny how there are christians with so much anger at old religious persecution, who turn around and say witches should be burned.

The couch holds my weight,

but poorly, sinking under the

excess drink between my bones.

My leg droops. Foot tapping

at the floor and the pinch of couch cushions

doesn't hold me up, anymore.

The cold bottle has grown warm in my fingers

but the ceiling doesn't change as long as I stare at it

and the crack stares back.

It's raining.

A rivulet of escaping water

hurries across my basement apartment floor.

Everything's escaping from me

these days. The case doesn't help.

The impossible case.

Not a single trace in a city where

everything is pencil, drawing lines.

I've gone back and back and back to the database

searching faces

reading pasts

(more than I needed to, getting lost in people's stolen stories)

(but I never look at my own file anymore)

and there's nothing.

Not a crumb of DNA or a single lingering

whiff of

who they might have been;

they've erased themself.

I chase a ghost and find myself

pretending I don't envy them.

Oh, to disappear.

To dust, to dust, we all die in the end

but I can never die when my

entire existence has been catalogued and chronicled.

They've created, with their surveillance,

a city of immortals.

I know I'm listed as depressed

and maybe that's why I've wrapped myself

in this impossible job, a last ditch

to fall into so I can pretend to die;

a shroud of empty searching,

except—

Something tickles at my mind

and I almost wonder if I'll run away.

The light flickers like a firefly, on and off,

and threatens an ending, but

I don't know if I can survive another

success

that doesn't,

in the end,

change

anything.

I'd rather be a moth in the darkness

than chase the moon and find an artificial light.

But the blinding bulb calls and

drink in hand

I keep fluttering flickering towards it.

But I'm good at my job.

Sometimes I pretend I didn't

wish I was a failure so I could

wallow in peace. But

I know I'm good at this.

Even in the impossible cases,

I smell something.

An elegant killer that leaves

a trace of perfume,

a footstep that never touches the ground and yet,

I can almost make out footprints in the air.

What's the easiest way to be invisible? I mutter

into my glass and the liquid answers,

don't exist at all.

They asked me to find the murderer.

An invisible, untouchable force that kills and leaves

nothing behind; a wound with no knife;

a scream cut off as body hits floor

with such impossible weight, because death

is heavier than a body.

And a mind, alive, is lightest of all;

so light it floats and drips away like rain

leaking across a basement floor.

To be seen keeps us sane but

to be watched

might kill us.

My body already so heavy on the couch.

When I close my eyes, that's all that changes.

I was dead already.

I always have a plan

because making decisions is too much weight

to place on my shoulders and mind

I've drunk water

but not enough

and once again my throat's dry

wanna hang out? come over, please,

so I can isolate myself in your presence

and feel more disconnected than ever

If I could only eat those little crescent bread rolls

and chocolate and pieces of cake

and read novels forever

but my body needs more

and it would all be better if I could make myself

cry ugly, blubber messy on the floor

I binge on distraction

to forget the nothingness

and that's the only reason I want more

just to stop the wanting

so I shake my hands and sigh and fail

and it's not enough

To me, gender is spiritual.

I connect with the idea of masculine and feminine energy in the same way I connect with the idea of the elements—earth, air, fire, water. They are energies that I can feel, ideas I can consider and explore.

I'm a woman, and I suppose that is for a few reasons. I have a female body and feel connected to it, and I definitely wouldn't want a male body. People see me as a woman and I feel comfortable with that. I like she/her pronouns. Although I sort of like he/him pronouns too, and I would be happy to go by those as well. People just don't use them for me, because they assume I'm a woman. And they're not wrong. I am a woman.

But I think I'm also more than that.

I believe that everyone has access to both masculine and feminine energy. So gender isn't just about which energies you can connect to, because anyone could connect to any (that doesn't mean they always do, but they could). Gender is so personal. It's internal. And we can make it external too, with our expressions of it, but where it truly resides is inside us.

And no one really knows what it is. Is it inherent? Is it learned? How much do our experiences affect it? Is it all made-up? No one really knows.

I do like the idea of being pangender (all genders), but I feel like a bit of an imposter saying so because I'm also a cis woman. I wouldn't call myself nonbinary. But pangender feels right. I'm a pangender woman. And why not? It feels right, and that's really the only way we have to determine gender anyway.

Not that I need to label it. But if I don't label it, I'm stuck in the "assumed woman" space.

Ultimately, the mainstream view of gender is still so limited. Gender is expansive. It doesn't need to be any one thing. It doesn't need to make sense. Because people are complicated and don't make a lot of sense, and I think we need to embrace that more.

So to me, gender is spiritual. It's a way for me to connect with myself, and with something greater than myself.

To someone else, it could be nothing more than what their physical body happens to be. Or it could be vitally important to them in a completely different way than mine is to me.

Why should it have to be the same for everyone? I say it doesn't. It can be anything.

Acrostic

Alliteration means every line

Adds to the unending fall of

An

Answer you didn't want to

Ask but couldn't resist,

A last effort to make

A sound that might be heard, but every

Answering cry is silence

And in the end, what

Are you left with, but

Aaaaaaaaaaaa—?

the veil thins, half moon

waxing poetic as ghosts

try to be noticed

a blind world shrugs off

the crisp, soul-searching autumn

in store-bought costumes

a kid in a sheet

who doesn't hear the whispers

of the real spirits