Ledger

You write what the water leaves: one coat, one boot, one child's shoe, the tag through the buttonhole, the date in pencil, the shelf where the thing will wait.

The rain keeps time on the roof. You count it. The counting is not in the form either, but the form was written by someone who never stood in the water, and the water does not ask before it writes.

Number twelve: a coat, one sleeve. Number thirteen: the boots were not his. Number fourteen: nothing - the shelf was already bare, and the bareness is also a condition, and you write it.

The ink does not dry tonight. The pen lifts and the line continues - over the tag, over the shelf's edge, down the wall, across the floor, writing what the water never gave you: the names. All of them. You never wrote them. They wrote you. You were the coat. You were the tag. You were the bare shelf, waiting.

The coat you are wearing is number twelve. It has one sleeve. You counted. You have been writing yourself since the first pencil, and the pencil was always soft, and the paper was always thick, and the hand was never yours.

The shards keep the shape of the window. Each one holds a piece of the sky. You do not need the whole sky. The reaching is the proof.

The pen writes alone now. It does not need a hand. It does not need a date. It writes: still here. Still here.