Slick... scratch... pause.
The threads of print and paper.
Slick... scratch... pause.
Drenched in darkness—there was a print on paper.
Slick... scratch... pause.
Written, blurred, and signed...
Darkness there—a print on paper,
A corner soaked in loss and ache,
Pressed deep into the fiber of paper.
Slick... scratch... pause.
Thinking in darkness.
Bleeding in blood.
Slick... scratch... pause.
The ink.
It pools too fast.
Slick... scratch... pause.
The ink.
It drains too slow.
Slick... scratch...
The ink.
Pause...
Was never just ink...
Slick... scratch... pause.
Rats and mice—they eat each other,
Gnawing into something still living.
Now, just another scrap left behind.
Left behind for bidding.
Cans rust and settle,
Half-filled with whatever can be found—swollen, dented—
Showing the way time warps metal into decay.
Shadows shifting within lines,
Never quite blending into the darkness—
Somehow darker still.
Water dissolves with the things that have drowned in it.
Something fades beneath it all
As it bleeds away...
. . .