Please don’t think me a coward, Aggie.

I have been watching myself in this room. He is deliberate in his movements, but there is something in his eyes, something—would I see it, if I looked in the mirror right now? He is showing me what to do. He has been showing me the answer, all this time.

I think I will follow.

He—I—this version of myself—

how can I be me if I am also him? who is he if I am me?

I watch him, me, with a rash of stubble and bloodshot eyes, wearing my blue flannel and black jeans—where are these clothes right now? In the laundry?—fasten a rope around one of the beams in the ceiling. Where did he get the rope? In the basement. Yes, there is a rope down there, now I remember. Why is there a rope down there? Is it there for me/him, for this moment?

Once the rope is tied tight and proper, he sets the wooden chair that I am sitting on right now underneath. Is the chair in two places? Am I?

What are you doing, I wondered, the first time I saw. What am I doing? But I couldn’t sign to him because he cannot see me, I can only see me. Him.

And then I watched him put the rope around his neck—it is tied into a circle, a zero—and step off the chair. Me. I have watched myself do this. And I asked, why? And the next time I asked, why? Why? Why?

And the tenth time, and the twentieth time, and the hundredth time.

And he kept doing it. And I kept watching.

I watched him struggle when the rope pulls taut. It doesn’t break his neck; he’s not high enough, but he cannot get any higher. There is no way to create a larger drop. So he chokes, swinging, kicking, clawing. My His eyes bulge, as when you squeeze on the end of an underinflated balloon. His My face goes red.

It is awful. It is grotesque.

How can I watch this and keep coming back? I am fascinated. I cannot help it. How could I not watch this? It’s the same every time because it is only one time, I think, so many times and only one time, after all.

Why did he do it? I wonder.

And the more I wonder, the more I cannot understand, the more I understand, the more I will never know, the more I feel I know, what is it, why do I do it, is he telling me something? Where is he going? Where has he gone, once it is done and he hangs swinging in the air, staring and not seeing me. Where is he. Where am I.

Maybe he went through the Zero. Logically, I think, that could be the case. If he went through the Zero, then maybe he is in some other place right now, and maybe he has found the truth.

I have to follow through. I will follow.

I have just realized, they’re not in the laundry, after all. I am wearing my blue flannel and black jeans today. I haven’t shaved.

And there is the rope.

I will follow.