Manuscripts Don't Burn

The stove is hungry for the ink and bone, A calcium ghost within the rising smoke. What's absent weighs much heavier than stone, The zero-word that neither of us spoke. Manuscripts don't burn! They turn to static! A cold witness in the heart of the flame! The void is filled with something systematic— The ghost of truth that doesn't need a name! The paper curls and then forgets the line, An anti-text beneath a salt-rimmed sky. The missing page is now the only sign, That tracks the movement of a dead man's eye. The minus-sign upon the air! The heavy hole within the wall! The script is gone, but truth is there— The loudest echo in the hall! We hunt for carbon ghosts among the grit, A geometry of things that we have lost. The fire took the words we shouldn't knit, And left us with a thirst for killing frost.