Each spring, I visit the mill where ghosts are made.
I first survey the grounds, not to inspect or investigate,
but to frame what I claim to know about existence.
As I make my way through the main room,
an electroplated manor of cool machinery,
I make sure to learn what I can about humanity
in the absolute absence of it. I study the well-groomed
walls, all eggshells and anguish, the full embodiment
of blankness. I keep moving, though, stopping only
to taste with forked tongue the tender flesh,
to stroke the cotton guts that fill the quilted torsos.
I inhabit the emptiness of the place, patch together
small tragedies along a flat line once wrinkled with life.
I want to find the place where the scraps are kept,
where they pile up like beaten chess pieces
in a cobwebbed corner. After a while, I examine the echoes:
the most important—or, essential—employees
toil loiteringly in a mess of heavy paperwork,
while the inessential staff simply loiter. Time passes.
I search the grounds for something sturdy, something
constant, but there’s no good way to manage it, really—
my feelings about it. And so even when I stroll past
the soaring gates to my car, parked illegally across
the street, I feel nothing resembling knowledge, nothing of note,
and the lock on my car door clicks like meaning.
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