I sit by the window at a small table, before me lay pieces of fraying velvet. Outside, branches surrender to the weight of a strange fruit. On the wall beside me, black rosettes open and close like dilating pupils. My eyes meet their eyes. I want to ask questions but a
failure of language causes me to settle on silence.

Picking up a fragment of velvet, I do the opposite of what I know:
I unravel. It is a simple, quiet, yet destructive act. The resulting fuzz and thread appear as sheddings of hair and feathers: indications of mourning and flight interrupted, as if reduced to and rising from soot. Unconcerned with boundaries of dedicated cleanliness, the fuzz takes on a life of its own. I am compelled by migration, malfunction, and the uncertain border between sanity and psychosis.

Negotiating loss, I make my own evidence.