waiting for the bus at the world’s edge 

i stand, rain tasting like unanswered prayers. behind, the station groans, its peeling paint a wound too ancient to mend. i wait, knowing the bus a lie. then, he arrives, a man assembled from some malignant elsewhere, his suit too clean for this squalor. cruel slits for eyes pierce the void. a stagnant puddle mirrors us. that’s when it sees me, and i it—the thousand-eyed, thousand-mouthed thing, clawing at a non-existent door. an impossibility made real. i try to scream, but silence, iron-heavy, chokes my voice. the man smiles, a chasm splitting the earth, a smile that bleeds the sky. he nods, not to me, but to the rising thing, its hunger primordial. he breathes dust, bone, the air before the world’s end. i watch. the thing emerges, slick skin pulling free like a lost nightmare, teeth gleaming in the gloom. i am paralyzed, mute. it grows, limbs elongated and warped. i blink. the puddle, the thing, the man—vanished. the street is empty. only the iron taste lingers, a swallowed secret. 

Marvin Smith is a poet from Ohio. He prefers to let his work speak louder than his bio. His poetry is inspired by the absurd, the uncanny, and silence.