Clearly, I see it. I was just about to leave when I found her kneeling there. A mountain range of rubble was written, designed, erected around her. She was clucthing at a book.

At first, all is black and white. Black on white. That's where I'm walking, through pages. These pages. Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of.

My voice is like a rumour. I'm not sure if it came out or not, or if it is true.

So many humans. So many colours. They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-coloured clouds, beating, like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.

A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.

Everything was good. But it was awful, too.

for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.