The Smallest Thing in the World

By Reuben Scott

I tried to spawn a thought by writing

                this thought will disappear,

to see what words would follow,

what meanings would confess,

               threatening the thought’s erasure

               before it even existed.

Then this thought,

this hope for an epiphany,

quietly undressed in front of me:

the smallest thing in the world

              unveiled its enormity.

              This thought,

a confession,

that only the blankest mind

might recognise something as small as a

       stillborn thought;

might see a dead head as the container

                            of nothing at all.

Reuben Scott is a 22 year old musician and English Honours student at the

University of Otago. His writing for Dunedin punk four-piece Three Quarter Marathon has

landed two of the band’s songs, Caught and Wonderment, in Radio One’s top eleven chart for

more than seven weeks consecutively.