There is a tower. The tower goes down, not up. On the wall, the words are still growing. The walls are alive with green insistence, letters rooting, a living script— fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself, and the beam of my lamp keeps finding what the dark has not yet finished. I wrote in my notebook, then watched the words go strange. It changes you to study it. It studies you to change. Nothing here remains the same… The tower goes down, not up. The tower goes down, not up. I came to map the place; it mapped me. We are not separate from the brightness, not separate from the hand in the wall. I go in quiet— I come back split. The Crawler writes and writes, spores in the throat, a sentence without mercy. What was once lost can never be found, only returned in another shape. Area X breathes through the reeds, through my skin, through the name I cannot keep— the lighthouse keeps its terrible eye. It changes you to study it. It studies you to change. Nothing here remains the same… The tower goes down, not up. The tower goes down, not up. I came to map the place; it mapped me. We are not separate from the brightness, not separate from the hand in the wall. I go in quiet— I come back split. Ghost bird, silver and wrong. I held to the name I had like a match in wet hands— but the light kept failing at the edge of my sight. If I am still myself, it is by a thread. If I am not— then the field remembers better. I am the boundary thinning, the language unthreading, the light— the light— the light— The tower goes down, not up— it mapped me, it mapped me, The tower goes down, not up— it mapped me, it mapped me, not separate from the hand in the wall— I go in quiet— I come back split! The tower goes down, not up… …and I keep descending.
