#*joan

(Call it the sickness it is: that doubt does not exist is a thought that gives shelter; that death, in its trial, shall not hold.)

Rust gets led beneath the yellow line by out-of-state, gaze dusting across everything in the hoarder's back room, faded but focussed. Remains of magazines high against the walls like pillars; always-been-there. Cindered-up and waterlogged now, sagging, into abstract responses, sea-weeded across the crime-scene - ads, columns - advents dropped off.

House was burning twelve hours ago. None in, or out, yet through the remains of a black doorway, the victim lays wing-down, untouched by the fire and impossibly whole. No burns but a red ring around the neck.