It is inescapable. This I know, and begrudgingly accept. Yet, do I begrudgingly accept it? Or do I just say that because what alternative do I have? I can kick and scream like a five-year-old in the paroxysms of a world-ending tantrum, but this accomplishes nothing, and because I am well-aware that this accomplishes nothing, I do not kick and scream, choosing the line—I begrudgingly accept—and because I have said it (and you have heard it) I believe it. I believe it.

My mother’s face is reflected in the silvery blade of the knife held to her throat. The man holding the blade is my father. Or someone resembling my father. In reality, once upon a time, this happened, but the image of my mother’s face reflected in the knife was superimposed later on. I have revised the knife incident endlessly, and in this latest version, my mother’s face is in the mirror of the knife, her face slim and distorted, a watery ebb, within the condensed frame of knife.

This is inescapable: The image, my journeys within placelessness that have become wearisome, dull, drained of vim. Is this what happens before it happens, it? No. I’d say not. No. Because questions are still being asked, because the words continue to rattle around as company within this matchbox, placeless, inescapable. The irony about a matchbox: it is dark inside, yet you are surrounded by an inventory of latent light.