Nothing Poem by Clayton Anderson

The clouds move slowly as they roll down the mountainside. Dark, thick, cold, like ink pouring over the earth everything begins to disappear into the darkness. Lost, I wander. Hands outstretched in hopes of finding anything to help me through. Nothing, I am enveloped by the deep blackness of it all. I hear nothing, smell nothing, feel nothing, and see nothing. Even the sound of my own heartbeat is gone. Still, I wander. Stumbling through the world or what used to be the world I know, I am unable to find anything. Wait, what’s this… my eyes… it’s blurry but something is there. Slowly my vision clears… everything, everything is… the same, it’s like nothing happened. Yet, it’s not right. Something has changed. I eagerly look around, confused, like trying to find what’s different in a newspaper match game. I can smell the honeysuckle across the way, the bees hovering about. I can hear the people passing by, lives moving quickly over their cell phones and laptops. But… again, something is different. I listen carefully, earnestly, trying to identify the sound. My eyes scan the world around me to aid in identifying the anomaly. Then it hits me. I close my eyes, and listen. It’s not a sound that I can’t name, but rather a sound that’s missing. My heart, I can’t hear my heartbeat. Panicked I put my hand to my chest… nothing, I can feel nothing. Fear sets in and I look everywhere to find help of some kind. I scream, “HELP! ”, “HELP ME”. No one responds. I run up to a man sitting on a nearby bench. “HELP ME, I need a doctor! ” He stands up, grabs a little girl’s hand, and walks away. I reach for his shoulder, but there’s nothing there. My mind begins to spin as I become dizzy; I stumble back to the bench and sit down. I try to calm myself, and that’s when it all rushes me at once. I’m not breathing heavily; in fact I can’t tell I’m breathing at all. Then my hand grabs the hard wood of the bench, but I don’t feel it. I feel nothing. I’m screaming and no one has even looked my way. In panicked fear I run and run, but I feel nothing. Then, walking toward me I see them. Surely she can help me, but she’s with… I run to them, and reach out to her, but like air she passes through me like I’m nothing, like I wasn’t even there. Shocked and petrified my brain races to put the pieces together. The blackness, my heart isn’t beating, no one sees or hears me; I feel nothing… that’s it… the nothing. I race back to where it started and look around. What happened right before the nothing? Slowly like cold honey the thoughts seep into my mind. But… it doesn’t make sense… no… but, she was here. She was right in front of me. Surely she would have helped me… right? Finally the memory clears, and I know for sure. She turns her back and walks away, with… I can feel a pain like no other in my chest… then nothing. I turn around and there, next to the bushes, I lie on the ground… still… my heart isn’t beating… all of a sudden, NOTHING.