A Place
Angela Woodward

There was a place, that was sort of the edge of a corner of a room, an area, a little piece of floor, a tiny section of a space, not marked off by anything, but up against the wall and partially along it, and a little bit out from it, not very big. There was nothing there but some dust, some leftover hairs, and a piece of thread. There was some air there. No people went there because the area wasn't very large, so maybe the side portion of someone's foot, a curved section of heel, might sometimes pass through the place, or a finger, maybe dusting with a rag, but no entire human beings ever went there. A few microscopic things lived there. No mammals lived there. Nothing sucked any milk there, or hatched from any eggs there. Some organisms reproduced there, by dying into themselves and doubling. The things that fell into the place were dead portions of living things that had already been dead while attached to the things, like hairs or skin flakes, or similar inorganic attachments that didn't matter anyway. At night this place was dark. There was electricity in the room that this place was sort of a part of, but the place as it was was not electrified. Eight million miles away in outer space, a huge thing burned itself up so gigantically that it lit up an entire planet, one half at a time, and during the half of the time the side of the planet on which this little portion of a room was stowed was lit up, this little place was lit up also, but still, it wasn't like the sun was really shining there.

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