for Michael Gira
Stagnant at the desk and remote in thought, his any effort at writing temporarily abeyant, deleted name marks time by randomly pulling the nib of the ink pen back and forth across the paper’s fibrous surface, discovering only after the fact that left in its wake was the Möbius outline of an infinity symbol, executed in tiny dimension between the printed grey lines.
Looping on around and back and again, the accumulant ink bleeds out to further darken the absorbent texture, an ourobouros fattening itself upon itself, to become what is more recognisably the mask of the Lone Ranger.
deleted name (comprehending, absently): Hi-yo Silver... away!
Having capped and set aside the fountain pen, he now reaches across and taps one finger upon the black coin on the desk to his right before sliding it toward him until, partway off the edge, he can collect it up with his thumb and drop it into his open palm.
He runs his thumb across the inert and impacted carbon beneath which any surface detail has been interred, imagining it a dense and impenetrable circle sucking all immediate light into itself after her, that black hole to which he might finally surrender everything.
He is not wrong.
