First Man On the Moon

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I woke unsure as to where I was, exactly, as I'd laid my head in so many places in the intervening years.

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Despite moving often, they'd read my dreams each-and-every night and had continually compared me to Christ so it was a relief to walk across an unpopulated sidewalk that had been powdered with pristine snow, such that I felt as if I were the first man on the moon.

 

I tried to keep all things proportional in my mind even as the downtown skyscrapers shot up into the clouds, towering overhead like colossal tombstones intent on domination.  

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I hurried past the security desk because I knew that if I went unseen, I couldn't be perceived as ugly.

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I hurried past the housekeeping workers because I knew that, inside, I was unclean.

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And when there was no-one else in the bathroom, I observed myself crying in the mirror, simply to watch something I’d never seen before.

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Even so, in the early morning, I could almost believe in god, my face - a stranger that I knew by sight but not by name, I clung to a smaller version of self, as if it were a life raft launched into nothingness after my chartered vessel had been splintered and swallowed by choppy waters.

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Utterly unremarkable, I craved adulation, forgetting my passwords, my personality designed to extract that which I required from persons with more than myself. 

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I had a tendency to worship. So many photos tacked across my cubicle walls. 

 

And, day after day, I chased purpose until I finally had to tell myself when it was time to feel satisfied. 

 

I’d been worked to the bone and wondered, “do I exist at all if not in the mind of others?” and would it be the smell that alerted my neighbors when I finally passed?

 

Either way, there was nothing of myself that I wanted to leave behind as I preferred the abyss where I could join the others that were just like me.