The World and the Story
by Thomas Higgins
He wrote himself into the story, the one he was writing to take himself out of the world. But the further he got, the less real they seemed—the world and the story—the one he was trying to write and the one he was leaving. If it rained in the story the paper was soaked. He had to start over, to rewrite from scratch the beginning he’d long since forgotten. No one remembers the way they began, both the world and the story, only that one day the end was in sight, though nobody knew where it was. For days it would rain and the words would flow through him, the light in the room and the lines on the page disappearing. He remembered a story he’d heard about floods, how so many cultures across time told the same story, something about how the water would rise, almost ending the world until nothing remained but the story of how it was saved. So he wrote the world into the story, the one he was writing in order to leave it behind.
Thomas Higgins is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Mid Theory Collective, Hoxie Gorge Review, the minnesota review, and elsewhere. Most recently he received 2nd Place for the Pauli Violi Prize and was nominated for Best New Poets 2024. He holds an MFA in creative writing from The New School.