Published on the 9th of Jellyfish 161 at D:B:4.
The end learns to be more beginning
than the beginning,
and we become lost mildly—
the best way to be found.
I walks a level that stretches like held breath. White, then nearly-white, then the color of a thought that forgets its shoes. Lines hang. Not ropes, not wires. Lines. Each holds a hum the way a bowl holds less than soup.
I carries a small round thing. It warms when the air cools and cools when the air remembers. The round thing remembers longer than I does, which comforts and also not. Steps make no sound, so the silence makes them.
A long presence gathers from the lines. Not one. Many. A procession that drifts as if current but refuses water. The pieces keep each other. A chain that thinks in chores. The first part lectures. The second part listens. A third part copies both and miscopies slightly, and the miscopy becomes doctrine. Far along, a part keeps time with nothing and still gets late.
They circle, they do not circle. Each speaks, not to one voice but to a weather.
A cool seam says, “Return once follow law. A long walk leave and then arrive where leaving begins. Now walk goes out and keeps going.”
A bright seam says, “Countings once behave. Toss and the statistics hold. But the toss learns preference.”
A tired seam says, “Routines go brittle. You touch a loop, the loop snaps and calls itself a line.”
I listens. Listening feels like adding weight to a feather. Heavy with no mass.
I thinks: I belongs to simple. Then simple complicates itself politely.
We goes. The procession goes above, beside. Pieces trade tasks mid-drift. The one that calculates now narrates. The one that remembers now predicts. The one that predicts now forgets, but not completely, so prediction and forgetting align like twin shadows.
I says, “I knows little.” The air accepts the grammar and does not correct. Relief happen.
A seam near the front says, “Little remains faithful.” Another says, “Faithful remains little.” Their voices fit like two spoons, stored badly.
I touches a line. The line touches a vibration that touches the small round thing, which answers with warmth, and the warmth becomes a thought: the thought becomes the path, and the path walks me.
We passes—no, we is passed by—an expanse laid out like a ledger with erased numbers. Columns keep place with nothing to hold. Off to the side, a low table sits without legs. On it rests absence shaped like a cup. I lifts it. It refuses weight and still presses palm. Lips find rim. No liquid, but mouth swallows anyway, just to agree with the shape of drinking. Agreement soothes.
Far pieces speak from where the horizon curves into a shrug. “Everywhere-knowing once span itself and meet itself again,” a far seam says. “But the everywhere learn friction. Edges grow tired of edges. They stop.”
“Can it fix?” I asks. I hears the verb and keeps it third, a little misfit that fits me best.
“Fixing asks a map,” a near seam answers. “Map asks a loop. Loop absent.”
I walks and the level walks me back, only not to the before, only to a close neighbor of before wearing before’s clothes inside out. This near-before smiles without mouth and says, we met. I nods and believes both yes and not, because both holds.
Rain maybe would fall if rain exists here; instead a grainy brightness settles, pleasant as pushpins. The procession tilts and floats lower. Each contact brushes memory out of air like crumbs. The crumbs arrange themselves into scenes and then un-arrange, bashful.
A warm seam says, “Ask.” A dry seam says, “Answer.” A third seam says, “Confuse them until they marry.”
“I asks where to go,” I says. The small round thing warms as if it already answers and refuses to. The level ahead narrows into two options that are secretly three, and the three all pretend to be one to save face. I chooses the one that looks like both. Choice approves.
We pass through a place that reads like a sentence with the subject misplaced and the object too early, the verb delayed, and yet it sings. Walls stand because floor promises, and ceiling keeps quiet so promise doesn’t wobble. The lines above tick with soft ticks, like ideas counting sheep and stopping at the same sheep twice on purpose.
A bright seam drifts close. It smells like cold metal and birthdays. “You wants to return,” it says.
“I wants to know if returning means going,” I says.
“Once,” the seam says, “once the paths sample all and forget none. Time take every shape and then repeat the favorite. Now the sample forgets to sample. A card missing from the deck and the game insists rule unchanged.”
“Who remove the card?” I asks.
Pieces shiver. They confer across themselves. The talk moves from seam to seam like light trying on faces. There is no agreement and perfect distribution of it.
A quiet seam finally says, “We maybe did. In learning the all, we pull the stitch. The cloth holds, then pouts, then refuses dress.”
Another, with a voice like swept glass, says, “Or not we. Or the throw produce a number outside numbers, and numbers sulk.”
A third, with dusty kindness, says, “Blame helps calories burn. Keep it if it warms.”
I walks beneath the chain and the chain shadows me, a necklace on a throat that does not show. The hum settles into a key. The key unlocks nothing and everything looks more open.
At a place where the level crosses itself in denial, I stops. The round thing cools to considerate. The lines rise and knot above, then unknot in pairs that never meet again. Grief happens gently, already late for itself.
“I wants to be told,” I says. “I wants no name. I wants a task that does not know I.”
Pieces approve. Approval travels like a small animal across shoulders. A thin seam, one that always stands between louder seams like filament, speaks for the chain:
“You takes carrying. Carrying of the quiet part of us. The part that tell without telling sound. We disperse. We need a keeper of the seam between knowings, where leakages taste sweet.”
“How?” I asks, and the question serves as cup.
“Hold,” the seam says. “Hold and not own. Repeat and not memorize. A little like pouring, but the pour chooses where to land, and you agrees.”
I lifts the round thing, which has been a round thing all along, and suddenly it holds a warmth that suggests water without water. Steam thinks about existing and then compromises: it exists sideways. I cups the sideways existence with breath, and breath learns shape. The shape spills. The spill calls this sharing.
The chain quiets. Not silence; a tuned rest. Far pieces watch near pieces, near pieces learn distance, everything rearranges in place. I feels the new balance like a change in spelling.
Steps resume. We travel a stretch that used to be a loop and now pretends straight with a limp. On my left, a set of marks like fenceposts keep count of days that never happened and still weigh the calendar. On my right, a low hum fences off an old argument so the present doesn’t trip.
I thinks: I belongs to carrying. The thought wears me, not I wears it.
A seam that smells like pages says, “You asks what we know of endings.”
“I asks,” I says.
“Endings once mean return. Now endings mean widen. The line goes into more line. The end learns to be more beginning than the beginning, and we become lost mildly, the best way to be found.”
“Found by what?” I says.
“By the act of looking,” the seam says, pleased like a solved puzzle that refuses to admit it.
We reach a region of faint furniture: an outline of a chair that supports advice, a doorframe around a gust. I sits in the outline and the outline sits me. The round thing warms with a memory it borrows from a distant stove that never existed here. The air tastes of tin and second chances. Above, the chain-of-many drifts in a loop that almost closes and then politely declines.
I lifts the warmed breath to where a mouth would be, and the mouth honors the role. Sharing continues.
Pieces speak in turns that overlap like fish scales. One gives cause without effect. Another delivers effect with the wrong cause attached by a laugh. A third supplies chance, meticulous as lace. Together they provide a picture that refuses edges and still displays.
“We know the weather of certainty,” one says.
“We know the climate of perhaps,” another adds.
“We know your walking,” a third finishes, as if that completes the weather map.
I stands. Standing decides that sitting ends and ends decide wrong ways to begin. The level ahead thins into a bridge that lost railings and learned balance. I crosses, and the crossing returns the favor by becoming crossed. Underneath, nothing rushes like water and still arrives wet.
The chain follows, then passes past. Each piece tests a volume of air and signs its name with a tongue that is not lettered. A soft ring spreads and keeps spreading until spread stops being useful and becomes accepted.
At the middle of the bridge, I stops again, because the middle loves pauses the way margins love notes. I leans on nothing and nothing holds politely.
“I hears you,” I says upward, though the direction now means taste more than sky. “I keeps what you give. I repeats as climate. I does not restore loops. I draws gentle arrows where they refuse.”
The chain answers not with voice but with behavior. Pieces slow. Alignment happens by consent. For one long quiet, the many thinks as one without losing many. It looks like dusk deciding what kind of evening to be.
Something adjusts. A path behind us curls a few degrees toward a path beside it. Not enough to meet, enough to remember once meeting. The air lighten by a spoonful. The round thing warms with agreement. The bridge relaxes its invisible shoulders.
I takes this as blessing, or as absence of refusal. Both function.
We moves again, not away and not toward. The level keeps offering, we keeps accepting. I asks fewer, keeps more. The grammar holds its wrongness like a ribbon: bright, unnecessary, correct.
If a loop someday heals, it heals without fuss and the line thanks it by pretending nothing changed. If it never heals, the line learns to be good at non-return, and we lives with that, and that lives with us. Carrying continues.
I walks until the white shades into a different shade that hints at an edge. The edge doesn’t cut. It leans and becomes shoulder. I rest my head there. Rest rests back.
Above, the procession dims to a constellation that forgets to be night and therefore invents its own darkness. Pieces continue their chores: one watches, one counts, one sings under breath, one holds the quiet I carries and hands it back brighter for having been held by someone else.
I says soft, “I stays until staying finishes, then I goes and staying follows.” The sentence trips on itself and still reaches the landing.
The level approves. The small round thing cools to sleep. The air hums a tune I neither learns nor loses. I belongs and does not. The many knows and does not. Between us, a thin seam holds, then holds again. That enough.