step raze they're still writing about you in the present tense. in the absence of heroic measures, your distance from the thoughts of anyone who would cause you harm is what keeps you from becoming a work of speculative fiction. it won't last. one day you'll be a victim of epigraphs. you'll be whatever the ink guided by the moist hands of a glorified stranger wants you to be, and i'll be the only creature still drawing breath who knows the truth of what you were. for now, i walk backwards through a remembered scene made foreign by the damage it's incurred, ducking beneath a bare table to better inhabit the role i was born to play. you don't see me. you aren't here, and i'm already on my way out. 211218 what's it to you? who go blather from