1.

   A girl in the dark, in a corner, spitting out sunflower seeds, spitting out sunflower seeds into the dark.

   Pppfft-pppfft, the sound her mouth makes when spitting, and the barely audible plip when the shells hit the ground. Pppfft-pppfft, seed-rhythm announcing itself as textural dew in the dark, as rhythm raining.

   The girl seems to be waiting for something.

   Or if that you attributing waiting to the girl based on your own gnawing anxiety, impatience, restlessness? All you really know, by what you’re observing, is that there is a girl in the dark spitting out sunflower seeds (and the seeds may not even belong to sunflowers). Anything else you add would be conjecture and story-making. If you do not make a story of the girl, then what? What will become of you? And her? If no story, then what?

   Words fail you. Or you them. Something’s failing something here. Of this you are certain.

   The girl shifts her weight from one foot to another. He left knee is bent, slightly protruding. You could report on the girl physically. Changes in posture, movements, gestures. You could do that. You cannot comment on her features, because the shadows have made her featureless. The girl, a silhouette, is ruined and saved by dark. Isn’t that you again projecting onto her?

   The girl’s chest subtly expands and contracts. She is breathing. In case you were worried that wasn’t breathing. She is.

   Soon you will leave this place. When you return, the girl may or may not be there. That’s the funny thing about the dark. Figures and objects appear and disappear. A magic lantern show aligned with its own call and demise.

2.

   A girl in the dark, amounting to dark. Qualitatively. Her jaw moves. Yet there is silence. Is she chewing? Chewing on what? Food? Words? Her jaw moves. It is ancient history and lengths you’d go to.

   You. Not her. You would go to certain lengths to get there, even if the measured progress of these lengths are unknown, and there is a fallacy.

   The girl seems to be leaning against a wall. If not a wall, something. Something is supporting her. Feeble light cuts geometrical swaths across her arm. Her arms are bare. Sleeveless.

   So you could say—There is a sleeveless girl standing in the dark—and it would be true. Yet would it? The girl might not be wearing any top. She could be naked from the waist-up. Or the waist-down. Or fully up and down without clothes. You don’t know. The girl is a silhouette. She is clothed in dark. So say that, write that. She is clothed in dark.

   What becomes of the girl when you are no longer witnessing her, no longer watching her? Does she disappear? Does she remain always and forever the same?

   She has yet to move. Except for her jaw. She could be chewing on words she hasn’t spoken, grinding down on ancient history and impossible lengths.

   The girl become silence, becomes the dark, as they become her. You are witnessing an agreement, a truce. Or is that you again imposing your preference and need for silence and dark onto the girl? It is hard to know the difference without a deeper and consciously sustained inquiry, without the passive slant and testimony of light.