Member-only story
Mechanized
I am unconsidered
The air is dead and I’m the unmasking. Each day I become more unmasked. The world is terrified
at the underneath, but the scraping is slow. I am made of conflicts. What is war to me but an ember? When birds shallow cross
the sky I have solitary thoughts. My deepest wish is to leave but the rubber is cracked and the road is hot
and I am stuck between lines and the people who made them. It’s still here. In the process. Life does not move, and the air died
long ago, trapped inside a tire. The tire is flat, but still driven. I am like the other men. Mechanical. They say
to turn so I turn. Doing for people because that is man’s duty. And duty is made of gears eating gears. While I become
more like a factory, while stacks exhale fumes, while turbines spin, a single bird flies overhead. It does not look down. It does not shed
a glance. It flies by until it becomes a dot on the horizon. And never stops.
Hey, I’m Roman. I’m working on my debut novel, 20xx, a work in magical realism. I write on Substack.
