DID I CRY BECAUSE I’D SEEN OR HEARD OR READ OF CRYING? — BENJAMIN MCPHERSON FICKLIN
/Supposedly there was a time when we lacked microcosms, which not only means we lacked maps, but also means we couldn’t look at something outside of ourselves, say a squirrel struggling to find a buried acorn, & see its similarity to our own lives, like our own search for sustenance, & I know this seems absurd, but explanatory microcosms are so formative to our experience of reality that we can’t possibly imagine a time without maps, maybe the first maps were dots etched in cave walls: star dots—dots of galaxies, some credit the first “world” map to the Greek philosopher Anaximander, his map centered on the Mediterranean Sea & had three continents, but I don’t trust that his map was the first: Whiteness—Eurocentrism—colonizing worldview have all tried so hard to engrandise its history while murdering everyone else (& I do my best not to trust a serial killer), that I think Anaximander was probably only the first Greek to make a map. Maybe not even.
Supposedly there was a time when I’d never had my heart broken, a time when I’d never broken a heart, but how many heartbreaks had I seen in movies or read in books or heard in songs by the time I was left standing alone outside my locker, school having been out for an hour, watching her walk away & toward the bus she’d already missed, & I was crying, & did I cry because I’d seen or heard or read of crying after heartbreak? Did I yearn for love because a love story is one of our favorite types of stories? Was it an act? I don’t think so, I don’t think so because I didn’t want to fall in love that night in Xela, because all I’ve wanted these last six or so years is to maintain a kingless palace in the mountains, or a below-ground labyrinth of roses, but they (The Wild Creature) laid it all to ruin simply by being, being, being, igniting hills of dried lavender, & now I know that my oasis is one of flame.
Benjamin McPherson Ficklin will never surrender—Benjamin McPherson Ficklin will always love you. They're the author of the chapbook A Cynical View of Dystopian America. Their work has been published in Lomography, wildness, Ursus Americanus Press, STORGY, Clackamas Literary Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Autre, Oregon Voice Magazine, and included in Best Small Fictions 2019 and Best American Essays 2020. When not on the detective trail, they teach literary seminars in their hometown of Portland, Oregon.
