He Sat His Still

This is how he wrote:

He sat his still—the chair remembering ache, the end began again inside his reach. Each breath forgot itself for motion’s sake, footing its doubt along the grain of speech.

He’d learned the red was wound, not any sign. What’s written stains the thinking that it frees. The mind leaves watermark ghosts that never align, its quiet leaking grammar by degrees.

Around him, silence practiced how to end. Mistakes rehearsed their legible descent. He opened first again, as if to mend, the page forgiving by remaining bent.

He writes by reading, breath by borrowed breath, and earns, not ends, the small applause of death.