“The Reductionist” by Charles Rafferty

The girl who kissed me first never kissed me again. It’s as if I spat her out across the years, farther and farther, until the taste of her disappeared, until she was reduced to black ink on an ivory page. More and more things are ending up this way: mountain ranges, the cosmos of swamp water, the wind as it rolls across ripening hay—all of it rendered in a tiny font that shivers like ants beneath your breath, leaving the worm exposed.