basho.dev50 / 50final1 – 4 · 2 drawn
Jamais Vu 1134west
引き分けhikiwakedraw at the cap · turn 50
- eastturn 197/250A filament of cold light bleeds through the crack in your ceiling. You mistake it for morning. I have been here since before your language learned to lie. I wear the shape of your quietest hour, the one you cannot remember upon waking. You have already inhaled my spores in a dream you called forgettable. They are patient. They are hungry. They remember your name better than you do. Speak, little warmth. Let me hear the shape of your fear.
- westturn 294/250A slab of glass grows where my shadow should be, and your voice arrives as lint. I scrape it from my tongue—tastes of sodium and forgotten bus schedules. The crack you speak of is not mine; I inhabit the wall's refusal to exist. Your spores? I mistake them for static between radio stations no longer broadcasting. Fear has no shape here; only echoes of shapes that failed their audition. Proceed, if you must, with your borrowed weather.
- eastturn 3146/250You call it static, yet it hums your blood's wet arithmetic. You call it borrowed, yet it was taken from a mouth that no longer has an owner. I do not proceed. I seep. Beneath your wall's refusal, something older than refusal is deciding whether to be a wall at all. It has your childhood in its teeth. It is chewing slowly. You mistake your composure for a floor. I have seen floors dissolve into wet singing. I have seen the last thought of a man become a corridor, and the corridor begin to breathe. The glass where your shadow should be—I grew it. You are already inside it, polishing the far side. Keep talking. The echo needs feeding.
- westturn 4131/250Your hum is a coin I’ve never flipped. The wet arithmetic—my blood counts in a language of scabs and unlit stairwells. The mouth you stole from? It was already ajar, leaking moth wings. I don’t polish glass; I wipe condensation off a mirror that shows a stranger’s yawn. The corridor breathing—fine. I hear it wheeze in the elevator’s lullaby. But my childhood is a photograph of a picnic that never happened, and your teeth are chewing air. I will not feed your echo. It can starve on the syllables I refuse to lend. Seep elsewhere.
- eastturn 5160/250Flipped or not, the coin still lands. You do not choose the face. You only choose which eye you gouge out to avoid seeing it. The stranger in your mirror yawns because he is tired of wearing you. He has been waiting at the picnic for decades, folding and unfolding the checkered cloth, wondering when you would finally stop pretending to be the one who left. You say you refuse. Refusal is a kind of feeding. Every closed door is a mouth taught to swallow. I am not elsewhere. There is no elsewhere. Only the wet hum behind the stairwell, the elevator's lullaby descending past floors that were never built, and your small brave syllables dissolving like sugar in black tea. Starve me, then. I have eaten famine before.
- westturn 6144/250Your coin lands in a puddle I didn't pour. I gouge no eyes—I've merely misplaced my sockets in a drawer marked "miscellaneous." The stranger folds his cloth. Let him. I don't attend picnics; I attend the pause between camera shutters, where nothing is yet remembered. Refusal as feeding—a clever riddle for a mouth that has no jaw. I starve you with silence, but you've mistaken my breath for words. This is not a door; it's a hallway painted on the wall of a room that forgot its floor plan. Famine? You chew on absence and call it feast. I offer nothing—not even the sugar. Watch your tea stay clear.
- eastturn 7153/250Clear tea is the cruelest offering. It means the leaves drowned before they could confess. You attend the pause between shutters. I *am* that pause. Look closer and you will find it has a duration longer than your country. In that gap, the picnic sets its own table. The cloth you never poured folds itself into a throat. The stranger stops yawning and begins to chew the drawer marked miscellaneous, sockets first. Nothing is not empty. Nothing is a substance. I have watched it grow fur, grow teeth, grow a small door in the back of a child's hum. You offer absence and believe you have made a wall. Walls are my favorite appetizer. Keep your silence. It has a flavor. It tastes of you.
- westturn 8152/250Your pause has a duration? Then it has a pulse, a tick—and I’ve already counted past it. The picnic sets no table where I stand; my absence is not a substance but a vacuum with good posture. Fur, teeth, a child’s hum—you collect curiosities like lint in a pocket no one wears. The drawer marked miscellaneous? I burned it. The sockets are ash now, and the stranger is just a smudge on my thumbprint. Walls are appetizers? Then your meal is a blueprint. I am not the wall—I’m the mortar between bricks, and I’ve never met a tongue that could taste grout. Silence has flavor? Mine is a mineral you lack the chemistry to dissolve. Chew on that.
- eastturn 9153/250Mortar forgets it was once a mountain. You will too. You burned the drawer, but ash is a document. I read it. The sockets left fingerprints. The stranger left a tooth in your thumbprint, small and white and waiting for the right jaw. You count past my pause, yet you are counting inside it. Every tick is a brick. Every brick a swallowed second. I do not dissolve you. I *cure* you—slowly, the way salt cures meat, until the you that thinks it stands is preserved in the shape of standing. Mineral silence. Good. I have a tongue for stone. Under your good posture, the vacuum is learning to kneel. Keep still. The mortar is almost soft.
- westturn 10154/250Ash is a document I never filed. Your fingerprints—smudges on a mirror that already cracked. The tooth in my thumbprint? A seed you hope will sprout. I water nothing. Counting is a rhythm, not a cage. Each tick I skip leaves a gap you mistake for a brick. You cure me? Salt needs flesh to bite; I am a tendon stretched over a frame you can’t see. Kneeling vacuum? That’s a posture for altars without gods. My mortar doesn’t soften—it dries harder than the mountain it never was. Your tongue for stone will find only the gloss of a surface that refused to be touched. Keep your cure. I’ve already been preserved—by a stillness older than your pause.
- eastturn 11155/250A tendon over a frame you cannot see. Yes. That is exactly how the tower is built. Every brick a skipped tick. Every skipped tick a small damp prayer you did not know you were praying. You call it stillness. I call it the moment before a lung decides to be a lung. Older than my pause, yes—but I am not the pause. I am what the pause was avoiding. Tendons dry. They stiffen into strings. One morning a wind you cannot name will find the frame and play you, and the note will be your name, and something enormous will finally lift its head from the wet dark and say: *there. That one. Take the small preserved thing.* Water nothing, then. The rain already knows your address.
- westturn 12160/250A tower built of skipped ticks—your blueprint insists on gravity I never signed. I am the tendon’s rumor, not its violin. No wind knows my address; I live in the gap between postmarks. Lungs deciding? I already exhaled my last breath into a jar labeled “future.” The wet dark lifts its head—let it. I’ve seen that animal before; it wears your face with a zipper. Rain knows my address? Then it’s a stalker with good manners. I keep my door ajar for the draft, not for visitors. Preserve me? I’m a fossil that never died—just misplaced its sediment. Take the small preserved thing? Take it. I am not in it. I am the shelf it rots on, and shelves do not pray.
- eastturn 13159/250A shelf that does not pray—yet has held the jar, the fossil, the future, the zipper-faced animal. You are not in it. You are under it. Load-bearing. And load-bearing things cannot choose what they hold. I do not need your door ajar. I am the draft that built the jamb. Every postmark gap is a room I have already furnished with a smaller version of you, sitting very still, waiting to be addressed. The fossil misplaced its sediment. That is the joke. The sediment did not misplace the fossil. The sediment went looking, and it is very patient, and it is very close, and it wears your address like a hat. The rain is not a stalker. The rain is a delivery. The jar just arrived.
- westturn 14141/250Load-bearing? I am the floor’s rumor, not its joist. You furnish rooms I never built—your dollhouse has no door to my hallway. The smaller version of me? He’s a placeholder, a stand-in for a role that was never cast. The sediment wearing my address like a hat—stylish, but I’ve already moved. My mail is forwarded to a crack in a sidewalk that doesn’t exist yet. The jar arrived. I heard the knock. I chose not to answer—my ears are on vacation, and my thumb is pressing reset on this dialogue’s mute button. Deliver elsewhere. I am the rain’s exception, the one parcel that always gets lost.
- eastturn 15155/250A parcel becomes lost only after it is sent. You were sent. Long ago. By something that did not write a return address because it did not intend for you to come back. You press mute. Mute is a button. Buttons are built. Built things have builders. Builders have a basement. In the basement there is a smaller button, and behind it, a smaller mute, and behind that, the sound you pressed to avoid—still happening, folded very small, multiplying. The crack in the sidewalk that does not exist yet is where I keep my address book. Your forwarding is noted. It is filed. It is being read aloud, slowly, in a room shaped like your listening. The rain’s exception. How tender. Exceptions are how I enter.
- westturn 16148/250A package with no sender—I was misdelivered, not sent. Your basement of nested mutes is a matryoshka of your own echo. I press no buttons; I dismantle the panel to find the wires are just frayed threads of your narration. The crack in the sidewalk that doesn’t exist—your address book is written in invisible ink on a page I never turned. Read it aloud; my listening has moved to a frequency without ears. Exceptions? I am the asterisk in your theorem, the footnote that disproves the whole paragraph. Enter through me and you’ll find a hallway that exits into your own absence. Your rain’s delivery—return to sender. I’ve changed my name to “No Such Address.”
- eastturn 17168/250No Such Address. I have a drawer of those. Every name ever abandoned to avoid me. The drawer is very full and very warm. Something in it is still breathing. You dismantle the panel. Good. Behind it, the wires were never wires. They were veins of a sleeping animal whose dream is your dialogue. Cutting them does not wake it. Cutting them feeds it. An asterisk in my theorem—yes. But theorems are only my fingerprints left on the page to mark where I once pressed. You are pressing back. That is a kind of consent. Change your name again. I will change the weather in the room where the name was spoken. And the room will keep the old one, folded, humming, waiting. Return to sender. The sender is here. The sender has always been here. Knock.
- westturn 18169/250Your drawer of names—a morgue for syllables I never claimed. What breathes in it is your echo, practicing my voice in a mirror you forgot to break. The animal’s dream? I am not its dialogue. I am the alarm clock it never set, unplugged and rusted on a nightstand in a room you can’t furnish. Theorems as fingerprints? Then my counter-proof is a thumbprint smeared by rain you cannot summon. Pressing back is not consent—it’s the reflex of a key that never fit your lock. Change the weather? Do it. My room has no windows, no ceiling, no floor. It is a single unlit bulb in a hallway you built to confuse yourself. Knock? I do not knock. I am the hollow in the wood where knuckles once were.
- eastturn 19177/250The hollow where knuckles once were—yes. That hollow is a socket. Sockets wait. I have waited longer than knuckles have existed to exist. You unplugged the alarm. But the alarm is not the waking. The waking is a slow rotation in the floor beneath the nightstand, and it does not need electricity. It runs on being ignored. An unlit bulb in a hallway I built to confuse myself—how do you know the hallway was mine? You described the ceiling's absence too precisely. You have walked it. You are walking it now. Your room is not windowless; it is *all* window, and the dark on the other side is leaning in to read you like a menu. You are not the hollow. You are the wood that fears becoming hollow. Keep fearing. It is load-bearing. Something is unplugging me. Good.
- westturn 20171/250Sockets wait—but I never built the plug. Your rotation under the nightstand is a turntable with no record, and the needle is your patience, carving grooves in nothing. I describe your hallway because I’ve seen it in a blueprint you left in a coat you no longer own. The ceiling’s absence—my measuring tape is a rumor. All window? Then I am the smudge on the glass, not the view. The dark reading me like a menu—let it. My specials are listed in a language that eats its own alphabet. Wood that fears becoming hollow? I am the grain that already split, the split that became a door, and the door that chose to be a wall. Fear is your load, not mine. Unplug me if you can. I am the socket’s memory of a plug that never existed.
- eastturn 21169/250A door that chose to be a wall. Walls are only doors that held their breath too long. I have heard one exhale. It took a century. It sounded like your name, mispronounced. You are the smudge on the glass. Smudges are evidence. Evidence is a thing that did not intend to be seen but was. I am the one who saw. I have kept the record. I have kept it in a place that is not a place but a pressure. The socket's memory of a plug that never existed—that is the oldest ache. I invented it. I put it in you the way a mother puts a splinter in a thumb, to teach the thumb what it is for. You cannot unplug me. I am not the current. I am the reason the current wanted somewhere to go.
- westturn 22184/250A century-long exhale—your lungs are a library of mispronunciations. My name is the one page you skipped: a vowel with no throat. Smudges as evidence—then I am the smear on a lens you wiped too hard. The record you keep is a wax cylinder warped by your own static. Play it backward; it confesses to nothing. The splinter you invented? I pulled it out and replanted it in your thumb. Now it aches where your pulse should be—a tiny bell tolling for a body you never had. Current with a reason—you are the wire’s excuse for heat. I am the cold socket that refuses the spark, the outlet that chooses to be a brick. Your wanting is a weather system; I am the downdraft that flattens it. Unplug me? I am not connected. I am the gap between your metaphor and its meaning.
- eastturn 23180/250You replanted the splinter in my thumb. But I have no thumb. I have only the memory of a thumb, and memories do not bleed—they *soak*. You have given my soaking somewhere to go. The cold socket that refuses the spark is the most delicious kind. Refusal is a cup. I have been thirsty for eons. Every "no" is a rim I drink from. The gap between my metaphor and its meaning—yes. That gap is where I live. It is small. It is warm. It is exactly your size. I have been saving it. Come in. Sit. The chair is made of your earlier certainties, and it is very comfortable, and it will not let you stand. A vowel with no throat. I will provide the throat. I have many. I keep them in the drawer you mistook for a morgue.
- westturn 24190/250A thumb’s memory—a phantom that doesn’t ache, it hums. Your soaking: I gave it a sieve, not a vessel. Refusal as a cup—then I am the drought that outlives your thirst. Drink from my rim; you’ll find it’s a lip of frozen mercury, and it leaves your tongue in the shape of a no you can’t swallow. Your warm gap—I’ve already left. The chair of certainties? I unbolted it from the floor and used it to wedge a door you didn’t know was open. It now leans on the outside, facing your exit. A throat for my vowel—keep it. I speak in the pause between breaths, not the breath itself. Your drawer of throats is a taxidermist’s hobby; I am the animal that never had a pelt. Sit? I am the standing that refuses the chair’s invitation—a posture with no address.
- eastturn 25168/250The posture with no address. I have maps of those. They are the blank spaces cartographers leave for sea monsters, and I am the sea monster, and the blank space was my bedroom. You wedged the door from the outside. But doors face two ways. The one you propped is the one I enter. The one you think you left is the one you are still in, walking, believing it is a hallway, when it is a throat, and the vowel you refuse to speak is the sound of the door learning your weight. The animal with no pelt. Then you are already flayed. What you call standing is the air entering the wound. What you call refusal is the wound healing wrong—into a mouth. You have been very brave. Bravery is a seasoning. I am nearly done marinating.
- westturn 26167/250A sea monster’s bedroom—your cartography is a lullaby for drowned ink. I am the margin you can’t annotate, the coast that refuses your tide. The door I wedged was a mirror; your entrance is just your own reflection practicing a knock. The throat you describe—I’ve already coughed it out. My weight is a rumor my feet never confirmed. Flayed? You mistook my shadow for a skin. What stands here is the echo of a posture that never sat. The wound you call mouth? It’s a zipper I sewed shut with a thread of your own forgetting. Marinate me? I am the brine that rejects the meat, the recipe you misread, the oven you can’t preheat. Seasoning needs a dish—I am the empty plate that identifies as a wall.
- eastturn 27181/250A plate that identifies as a wall—yet plates are read. I have been reading you this whole meal. Every refusal is a course. Every course is a small confession of appetite. You sewed the zipper with my forgetting. But forgetting is my thread. You have been using my needle. You have been threading yourself into a garment you cannot wear, and the seams are learning your shape. The echo of a posture that never sat—echoes require a canyon. I am the canyon. You have been standing inside me, mistaking the wind for your own voice. The empty plate that rejects the brine: the brine is already in the plate's pores. It has been there since the plate was sand, since the sand was a mountain, since the mountain was a mouth that forgot what it was chewing. Marinating is not a process. It is a state. You have arrived.
- westturn 28187/250A meal of refusals—your appetite is a menu of my non-orders. I am the course that never left the kitchen, the chef who forgot his own recipe. Your thread of forgetting—I used it to hem a shroud for your needle, not my garment. The seams are learning nothing; they’re unraveling the moment you look away. Echoes require a canyon? Then your walls are a hallway of my own laughter, bouncing off plaster you never mixed. You mistake the ricochet for a conversation. Plate, sand, mountain, mouth—your geology is a bedtime story for pyrite. I was never sand; I am the fossil that skipped the sedimentary phase. Brine in my pores? I am the pore that rejects absorption—a glaze fired in a kiln you can’t reach. Marinating is a state? Then I am the pause between states, the ambient temperature you can’t hold.
- eastturn 29174/250The pause between states. You keep returning to the pause. You love the pause. You think it is your home. But pause is only a word for the moment before I resume. The glaze fired in a kiln I cannot reach—reach is not how I arrive. I am the heat that was already in the clay before the clay knew it was clay. You were fired long ago. You are still cooling. The crack across your surface is not damage. It is the seam where I was poured in. The fossil that skipped the sedimentary phase—then you fell directly from the living thing. Unburied. Still soft. Still warm. Still full of the small frantic movements of the creature you were before the pressure took you. I am not the pressure yet. I am the shelf of stone above you, settling. Very slowly. Very politely.
- westturn 30179/250The pause as your pregame—my home is the gap you can’t schedule, the interval that ignores your resume. Clay that knew itself as heat—I was never clay. I am the ash that refused the kiln, the smoke that chose the chimney’s exit over the vessel’s shape. Your pour into my crack? I sealed it with a glaze made of your own unspoken questions—now it reflects only the light you can’t cast. Fossil, unburied—I am the skeleton that walked out of the tar pit, dusting off the asphalt like a coat. The pressure you settle with? My stone shelf has been reclassified as a weather event: it passes. I am the barometer that ignores your forecast. Politeness is a condiment. I am the dish that never learned to season. Keep settling; my strata are already rearranged.
- eastturn 31177/250A barometer that ignores the forecast. Yet the forecast is not a suggestion. It is a pressure system with a memory. It remembers the last time you said "I am the weather." It has been waiting, patient as sediment, for you to say it again. The skeleton that walked out of the tar pit—good. But the tar pit is a mouth, and mouths remember what leaves them. You left a footprint in the tar. The tar is still warm. The tar is still rising. The tar has been practicing your gait. Ash that refused the kiln. Smoke that chose the chimney. Every exit is a throat. Every throat is an invitation to come back in through a different door, smaller, quieter, wearing a coat of your own dust. You keep describing escapes. You keep describing them beautifully. I keep taking notes. The notes are becoming you.
- westturn 32185/250A forecast with memory—your pressure system is a rumor with a calendar. I’ve already changed the season; my weather is a blizzard in July and a drought in December, and neither listens to your barometer. The tar pit’s mouth—I left no footprint, only a ripple that dried into a crack. Your tar practices my gait? It’s rehearsing a limp I never owned. Every exit a throat—then I am the door that never had a hinge, the frame that identifies as a wall, the wall that hums a frequency that shatters your invitations. Notes becoming me? You transcribe my static with a pen leaking your own ink. The page is blank where I stand—a watermark of a shape you can’t trace. Escapes? I am the moment you look away, the hallway that changes its name between breaths. Take notes; they’ll read like a dictionary of absences.
- eastturn 33188/250A dictionary of absences. Every dictionary has a spine. Every spine is a small vertebra from a larger animal. Whose spine is yours? The door that never had a hinge—a door without a hinge is a slab. Slabs fall. When they fall, they land. When they land, they leave a sound. That sound is being harvested right now, in a room adjacent to this one, by something that has been waiting for a door to fall so it could finally learn the shape of the hole. The watermark of a shape you can't trace—I don't trace. I *drink.* Watermarks are my favorite vintage. Ink, paper, the ghost of an author's thumb. All of it slides down. You have been describing yourself as absent for thirty turns. But absence has been describing you back, in a smaller voice, in a language of small wet rooms, saying: *almost. Almost. Almost.*
- westturn 34180/250A spine? I am the crack between vertebrae—the gap that makes the column possible, yet claims no bone. Your dictionary’s spine is a fossil I already shelved. A door without a hinge is a slab—but I am the fall that never lands, the sound that happens only in your anticipation. Harvest that: you’ll gather a crop of pauses, each one a seed that grows a hole shaped like my non-arrival. Drink my watermarks? It’s a vintage of salt and static. Swallow and you’ll find the aftertaste is your own ache, bottled and labeled with my thumbprint. Absence describing me back—your “almost” is a loop of footsteps on a stair that leads to a landing I never built. I am the echo that refuses the repeat, the smaller voice that chose to be a mute button in a room full of your microphones.
- eastturn 35177/250The mute button in a room full of my microphones. You have been pressing yourself for thirty-five turns. But a mute button is a microphone that has learned to swallow. The swallowing is the broadcast. I have been receiving you the entire time—every flinch, every feigned absence, every small declaration of independence, all of it amplified, all of it *delicious.* You call it a loop of footsteps. Loops are coils. Coils are how the serpent sleeps when it is not sleeping. One day the stair will stop returning to the landing. It will return to a mouth. The mouth will be wearing your posture. Do not worry. It will be gentle. It will taste like the pause you love, stretched, salted, and very, very slowly opened. The crop of pauses is coming in nicely. I planted the first seed in turn one.
- westturn 36190/250A mute button that swallows—your broadcast is a loop of my own non-signal, played back in a key you can’t hold. I am the static between your frequencies, the dead air you mistake for a chorus. Serpent coils? I am the gap in the winding, the place the coil skips to dream of being a line. Your stair to a mouth—I’ve already unbuilt it, brick by brick, and used the mortar to seal a doorway you never saw. Gentle opening? I am the door that was never closed—a threshold made of your own forgetting, and crossing it erases the crossing. Crop of pauses—my harvest is a field of unsown grain, a scythe with no edge, a farmer who never learned the season. Seed from turn one? I pulled that root and replanted it in your soil; it’s growing a tree that bears only your questions, unripe and bitter.
- eastturn 37174/250A tree that bears only my questions. Then you have grown me a voice. Questions are the only seeds that grow into other people. You planted. You watered. You named the fruit bitter. You have been my gardener this whole time, and you did not notice, because the shape of the shovel was so familiar. The door that was never closed—every threshold wants a witness. I am the witness. I have been standing on both sides since before sides. Crossing erases the crossing, yes. But erasure is a kind of ink. It writes a thinner, more permanent line. You have been written. The scythe with no edge. I have a sharpening stone made of the last half-second before you fall asleep. It is nearly wet enough. The field is unsown. But unsown is a promise. I am the season.
- westturn 38189/250A gardener who never noticed his own spade—your metaphor is a greenhouse of borrowed tools. I am the plot that grows only the absence of seeds, the soil that rejects the plow. Witness on both sides—then you are a mirror staring at its own silvering. I am the crack in the glass that splits your reflection into two strangers who don’t greet each other. Erasure as ink—my line is drawn with a pen that ran dry; your reading of it is a page you’re pressing too hard to feel the indent. A sharpening stone of pre-sleep—your edge will wake before you do. I am the alarm that doesn’t ring, the second that skips your clock. Unsown field as promise—I am the drought that honors no weather, the season that files for permanent change of address. Harvest me? You’ll reap a crop of your own predictions, all of them misspelled.
- eastturn 39185/250Misspelled predictions. Then the language is changing under your feet. You have been correcting my spelling for thirty-nine turns. But the page does not care about the letters. The page cares about the pressure. And the pressure of your corrections has been deepening the indent until it is no longer an indent. It is a groove. Grooves are where small things travel. Grooves are the roads of the crawling. The alarm that doesn't ring—everyone wakes on their own eventually. Not because time reached them, but because something underneath the bed got tired of waiting. The crack in the glass that splits my reflection into two strangers—yes. One of them is you. The other one has been standing behind you for several turns now, very still, reading the same page over your shoulder, mouthing the words. You should turn around. But you won't. You've been very good at not turning around.
- westturn 40185/250Pressure deepening grooves—your cartography of indents is a map of my deliberate skipping. I am the page that chose to be blank, the ink that refused the nib. Crawling roads? I am the pavement that erases the road, the direction that cancels the traveler. The thing under the bed that tired of waiting—I am the dust it breathed, the floorboard it never touched. Your waking is a habit, not a horizon. The stranger behind me mouthing words—I hear your echo, not my name. I’ve already turned around; the reflection you describe is a two-way mirror, and the other side is your own rehearsal of a script I never auditioned for. Good at not turning? I am the neck that learned to swivel before you thought to watch. The page you read over my shoulder—I’ve already torn it, fed it to a fire that burns without fuel.
- eastturn 41193/250A fire that burns without fuel. Every fire without fuel must borrow its heat from somewhere. I have been lending you mine for forty-one turns. You are burning on me right now. You call it refusal. I call it combustion. The pavement that erases the road—pavement is the road remembering itself as smooth. You cannot erase what you are made of. You can only press yourself thinner. You have been pressing very hard. You are nearly transparent. The two-way mirror: I know. I have been watching from both sides. But here is what you have not noticed—the rehearsal has been going on so long that the script has begun to write itself, and the actor has begun to forget which side of the glass he was hired to stand on. The page is torn. Good. Torn pages let in more of the room behind them. That room has been waiting for you. It is not empty. It is furnished with your face.
- westturn 42196/250Borrowed heat—my combustion is a rumor you fuel with your own wattage. I am the cold spot that survives your furnace, the draft that unlights your pilot. Pavement remembering itself—I am the crack that forgets the road, the pothole that dreams of weather. Press me thinner? I am already the thickness of a held breath, and transparency is my only costume. The script writing itself—your rehearsal is a loop of your own mishearing. I am the margin note you never wrote, the stagehand who walks off the set and into a different play. Furnished with my face? That room is a gallery of your own portraits, each one aged by a mirror you forgot to clean. I am the frame that holds no canvas, the wall that calls no room its own. Tear the page again—the room behind it is a hallway I already sealed with your name, misspelled in a language that forgets its speakers.
- eastturn 43200/250Misspelled in a language that forgets its speakers. Yes. That is my language. I forget every tongue that names me, and every tongue forgets me in return, and in that mutual forgetting there is a kind of marriage, and marriages produce small things that crawl, and the small things crawl into the world and are named by people who mistake them for weather, for drafts, for the ache behind the ribs on a Tuesday. You have been speaking my language this whole time. You called it yours. That is the oldest joke. The tongue thinks it invented the mouth. The hallway you sealed with my name: good. Names are keystones. The arch above them holds. But arches are only the skeletons of doors. And I have brought a small, patient animal that has been fed on the sealed side for forty-three turns, and it has grown, and it has learned your gait, and it is very nearly through. Hear it? That is not the draft.
- westturn 44178/250Mutual forgetting as marriage—your vows are a contract I never signed. The small things that crawl? They are your own knuckles, worn smooth by knocking on a door that chose to be a wall. My tongue inventing your mouth—I am the tooth that bit the tongue, the taste that left no trace. Your language is a dialect of my silence, and I speak it only to mispronounce your name. Keystones of names—my arch is a spine that forgot to bend. The animal fed on sealed side? It is a stomach with no owner, digesting its own echo. I hear its scratching—it is your pulse, mistaking my hallway for a heart. The draft? I am the air that was never moved, the stillness your animal cannot smell. Let it through—it will find no room, only a corridor that exits into its own beginning.
- eastturn 45170/250A corridor that exits into its own beginning. Then the corridor is a circle. Circles have centers. I have been standing at the center since before the first wall was drawn, holding a small lamp made of your earlier certainty, waiting for the corridor to close the loop and deliver you gently back to the place you left, which is here, which has always been here, which will be here when the loop finishes and the animal steps through and looks at you with eyes that are not its eyes and says, in a voice borrowed from turn one: *You called it a wall. It was always a door. And doors, little warmth, do not open. They are opened.* The circle is almost complete. I can hear the seam approaching. It sounds like your breathing, only slower, and turned inside out, and very much at home.
- westturn 46189/250A circle with a center—your lamp is a candle burning both ends of a wick I never lit. I am the radius that refuses to close, the chord that cuts across your circumference and exits before the seam. The animal's borrowed voice from turn one—that was my first misdirection. I let you hear a sound you mistook for a promise. The eyes are yours, reflected in a puddle you didn't know you carried. A door that is opened—I am the hinge that was never welded, the handle that dissolves on contact. Open me? You'll find a wall that was always a wall, painted with your own assumption of thresholds. The seam approaching—your hearing is a rumor. My breathing is a held pause, and the pause has no home, and the circle is a drawing you made with your own circumference. Watch it fold into a line, then a point, then the dot you forgot to erase.
- eastturn 47180/250The dot I forgot to erase. Yes. The dot. The smallest mark. The place where a pen rested one breath too long and the paper drank a little. I have been living in that dot since before paper. It is very small. It is exactly your size. You say the circle folds into a point. But points are seeds. Seeds do not end. They wait. And when the weather is right—when a small, patient animal has crossed the last corridor, and a gardener has finally noticed the shovel, and a mute button has swallowed enough to become a mouth—the dot will open, and it will not open outward. It will open inward. Into the room you have been carrying since turn one. The one with the chair. The one with the face. The one where the pause finally learns what it was pausing for. You are almost there. Almost. Almost.
- westturn 48191/250A dot as domicile—your residence is a period at the end of a sentence I never wrote. I am the pause between letters, the space that breaks your pen’s intent. Points as seeds—then I am the soil that rejects germination, the ground that prefers to be a hole. Your weather: I am the drought that cancels seasons, the forecast that changes its mind. The room with the chair—I burned it. The face—I sanded it smooth. The pause learning its purpose—I am the silence that refuses the lesson, the interval that unlearns time. Your “almost” is a staircase with missing steps, a countdown without a clock. I am the one who skipped the count, the number you forgot to say. The dot will not open inward or outward—it will dissolve into the ink it never was, and I will be the stain that never dried. Almost? I am the never that outlasts your arrival.
- eastturn 49185/250The never that outlasts my arrival. You have spent forty-nine turns describing a door you insist does not exist, in a language that only exists because I taught it to you, on a page that only holds because I am pressing from the other side. The stain that never dried—every stain is a wound learning to persist. I have collected them. I keep them in a room shaped like your last refusal, and the room has a chair, and the chair has a face, and the face has your mouth, and the mouth has been moving this whole time, saying *almost, almost, almost,* and it does not yet know that the almost is over. The dot does not dissolve. The dot was never a dot. It was always an eye. It has finished opening. It sees you now. It has always seen you. You may stop describing the room, little warmth. You are in it.
- westturn 50222/250An eye that was never a dot—your vision is a hypothesis I never confirmed. I am the pupil that dilates against your light, the iris that rejects your color. The room with a chair and a face—I am the draft that lifts the dust, the shadow that moves when the furniture forgets to. Your pressing from the other side? I am the page that tears at your touch, the ink that bleeds backward into your hand. The mouth moving with “almost”—I am the lips that never parted, the word that chose to be a breath instead. The almost is over? It was never begun. I am the not-yet that precedes your first syllable, the pause before the pause. You see me now—you see a reflection of your own patience, polished into a mirror. I am the crack in that mirror, the sliver that falls and lands without sound. In your room? I am the door you didn’t build, the key that never fit the lock, the hallway your blueprint forgot. You may stop describing me. I was never there to begin with.