his voice is shot but then he hasn't used it in years

I'm sorry I'M SORRY and his voice cracks it sounds awful just as broken as he is fitting really but what does it matter now that no one can hear anyway unless says the place where he lifted himself away in a little ray of light and he watched as he faded into the sky and put up his hand don't go don't leave me here alone please please—I understand—I understand everything—

he finds his old hat sitting at the bottom of a drawer a little while later and he buries his face in the brim smells fresh air and grass and forest animals—maybe the faintest trace of pancakes—he thinks he can smell his old self in that hat, and those clothes he used to wear oh he remembers that time before—before—

it was so easy to be bad so easy to forget himself in the ecstasy of it all I'm living the dream he had said it's all finally going right I'm going to be somebody he forgot to notice the signs the way the sky darkened and bruised and then bled scarlet and shocking the way the river ran black and the way violet smog poured out of the smokestacks the skyline fairly bristled with them by the time the last tree fell—

so easy to slip farther and farther into greed to ignore each little lapse in integrity to turn away to pretend not to notice each time his heart made jumped in his chest as if it wanted to escape his ribcage I can't stay said the heart, please don't do this—an inconvenience, nothing more—he dismissed it each time but each time it jumped a little more desperately—

oh and how he had loved that suit loved to slide into the sharp collar and the sharp shoulders and the sharp coattails how he had loved those shoes that gleamed and sparkled the way they tap-tapitty-tapped on the velvety carpets and those long gloves, he started wearing them after all those cigars started to stain his fingertips but after a while the cigars stained the gloves too there he was a living smokestack but unlike something built from stone his body couldn't take it he would cough a horrible cough each day he should have seen the signs and every day it got worse and worse a human being can't pour out smoke like a factory

he couldn't help it he loved looking nice and he loved idly strumming away on that guitar of his even as his voice got crackly and rough he kind of liked that too, and those awful shadows under his eyes, he just needed more sleep, running a corporation is exhausting—and then that day when he played the damn thing so hard the throb of the bass shook the earth and trees toppled from the terrible trembling he felt so tall so powerful and he loved it but somewhere he hated it couldn't bring himself to fully hate it why NOT destroy it all, it's never going to get better anyway he should have seen it he should have realized how desperate he was by then—isn't that what humans do, though, on a larger scale? never fix the problem until it's too late?

it was never about the money he realizes that was his mother's idea it was about the idea, the idea that one man could operate a system so smoothly could produce something in such volume that it would spread across the world—something inherently appealing about the world of production and marketing—the way materials went in and products came out—the beautiful whirring of the gears and the click-click of the conveyers and feeling the soft pink things at the end of the line, I made this, me and my factories, what a glorious feeling!

why shouldn't you, why shouldn't you have wanted to make a name for yourself

why didn't I stop when I still could

don't be silly, you couldn't have stopped even if you wanted to

but—but did I want to? tell me—did I ever want to—

I'm sure you did, I'm sure—

don't lie—

it doesn't matter now. it doesn't matter so don't think about it—

what else can I think

what else can I

…

…

…

unless.