Evidence

Say the same, the usual. Register it. Make a mark here to show – what? that you were here?

Over opposite, on the first floor, the bamboo sphere of a lampshade, half hidden by a curtain. Write it down, write that detail down. By witnessing it you witness yourself, your capacity to see, to know. But first of all your capacity to write, as it grants you the power of seeing, of knowing.

Write it down – how else to give yourself substance? How to let the world double itself here? But in the end it is nothing. An empty doubling. Of what does it provide evidence? That you would like to be here. That you would have liked to have been here.

Is a single detail enough? What more should there be? Evidence. That’s what you want. To have left a mark. But for whom? For others? For yourself? Or is it for the archive no one reads; that great waterfall of prose that scrolls down every page on the internet?

Prose for no one: that, then. Prose for indifference, for neglect. Say the same, the usual. Provide evidence – but for whom? For yourself? But you’ll never read these words. By tomorrow, you’ll have forgotten them. For others, then? But who reads, and why?

But somewhere else, from another angle, the archive is reading. Somewhere else, reading, not reading; not looking down at me as the couple in the room do not look down. But the sphere of the lampshade nevertheless. The half-drawn curtain nonetheless. Evidence.