There was once a point—not like a point of singularity crushing beautifully down on itself within hungry darkness, though there are troves of truth to that more visible than the light incapable of escape from that singular point, perhaps even more applicable overall;—but, no, this point is like darts thrown at a map and the random perforations it generated, these later marked with push pins and later still strung up with thread roadmapping tangles from point to point, looking more like veins than (perceived) relation between each thumbtack-violated perforation it was supposed to somehow reveal—a point in the stillness of gaps between breath and gasps (not so different after all) that bled like a dull brass polished over and over and over to extract a shine, stripping away layers of (perceived) grime that, by this point, had become true skin.

That one point, the small corner that shone after so much effort and even more sandpaper ached like a wound. However, now, was it a wound? And if it wasn’t, what was it? A tiny thoughtmoment(re)action, the smallness, the inanity of it balloons hugely through everything.

Everything.

And here, another question arises, as does indiscriminately with every (perceived) answer: was it the pointedness–the sharpness–that made a thing painful; or was it patterns strung up between the thumb tacks for outside voyeurs all open and bare; or was it what the point was pinning down, what the rest were missing but throbbed and throbbed the throbs of post-cardiac arrest that caused a pain? Surely, it can’t be all of those, logically. The Scargarden that is Myself may argue otherwise.


Jenna-Nichole Conrad may or may not bleed ink.