She was an avid writer of obscure texts. Her obscure texts, which related to identity, language and alienation, rendered the topics as and through compound fractures. She adopted the brokenness and mirrored it obscurely in brokenness. Self/reflecting through heretical shards. Hr syntax was snapped twigs and pulverized bones. Where once were words was white dust and smithereens caving to wind. In the old days they might have called her a witch for conjuring such a spell. In the new days she was called a witch, though not in so many words, but in different words and silences wearing disguises and pitchforks.

   Her obscure texts had been sewn into a book and that book was published and one week after that book was published this woman was raped, strangled, and bludgeoned to death in a building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. What was this building? What was she doing there?

   The man who committed this abomination was the building’s custodian. This man turned this woman into a disaster, a back-page. The woman was originally from South Korea. She spoke three languages: Korean, French and English. I wish I could remember the woman’s name. I can’t. They took it away. These kind of mental records are erased these days. You may recall fragments of what happened, you may recall the broad strokes of bludgeon, rape, and strangulation, but the person upon whom these violences were committed, that person’s name … those things are taken away through their procedures. Their, as in they, as in I don’t-know-who … I have never known.

   People gripe and complain about obscure texts, but there is a far more dangerous and insidious obscurity at play involving they and them, and the thorny relationship between pronouns and procedures. Her name is gone, but what remains: rape, strangulation, bludgeon.

   I do not know much about this woman. I have told you everything I know. I wish the questioning would end, wish they would let me out of this room, they. They told me to speak, to write, as if no one was listening, but how can I do that when I know they are listening and watching. It reminds me of the command people sometimes give when taking a photo: Act natural. As soon as you start to act, isn’t that the end of naturalness?

   They have seized the woman’s book of obscure texts, but I have memorized most of it by heart. When I say memorized by heart, I do not mean that I can echo the text verbatim, what I mean is that my heart has absorbed the essence of the book, in the way a sponge absorbs water. Strangulation, bludgeoning, rape. These are brutal words, darkened windows that open onto slates of hell. I just remembered something else. The woman was married. If I were the woman’s husband and I received word that my wife had been murdered, and these words were used in relation to her murder, how would I process that? There must be a lot in this world that goes unprocessed, because somehow we keep going on, and we keep doing these things that make processing a peril and impossible scar.

   Someone mentioned a river for lost souls. Maybe the woman’s name is there. When they let me out of this room, if they let me out of this room, I will begin my search.