Ъ – a letter firmly holding its place in the alphabet, producing not a single sound, possessing no precise shape or definition, and yet it exists. We all know of Ъ. It gives form to our words, separating their softness the moment they approach an ending. The alienation of Ъ lies in its inner excess, unreadable to the simple eye. We feel Ъ the way we feel a truth that cannot be pointed at with a finger: too bright for death, and not sufficiently clear for exact use.

A limbo – the place where our inner Ъ resides. A crystalline, untranslatable fragility, flatly describing a city through its map without ever arriving inside it; or perhaps it is the very essence of the city, existing beyond the territorial markings familiar to us.

Ъ – the only truth accessible to us precisely because it refuses translation, accepting no foreign form other than its own. Perhaps words are gloves placed over a feeling like Ъ so that we do not burn ourselves on truth.
Although –  the – gloves –  don’t – always –  fit.

The unbearable weight of an empty page.

You watch carefully whom you reveal yourself to and who will bear witness to you. For with each word that flows into another, there becomes less and less of you. You sense how, in the darkness of cold rooms, the words of some forgotten chronicle begin to separate into layers. You hide images like seeds of the rarest herbs, patiently waiting until they turn into a herbarium.

Ghostly alone, you drink from a fogged glass and think that poetry most faithfully resides in the simplicity of things –  a simplicity that remains inaccessible to you. In the obvious bread on the table, in the enchantingly banal saucer of olives, in the irresistible warmth of a wooden console where you place your hand.

Suddenly, it was noon.

How could one not envy the eyes: their good news is transparent, and the blue sky cuts out the contour of a church where silence gathers once more. A flock of pigeons, like a black constellation, spirals wildly away from sight, from consciousness, from memory. A silver balloon, released in fright, drifts upward together with the dying echoes of something. The shadow of a sundial trembles soundlessly.

A thought withers at the tip of my finger, reborn upon a silver metallic sphere that playfully glimmers in the sun – and there, inscribed upon it, a word beginning with the letter Ъ.

The primordial sensation of reaction –  that is truth, untranslatable into a letter.

Perhaps, like water resisting the shape of its vessel, feeling refuses to become a written truth.

Like a character invented before sleep who, inside the mind, appears perfectly ready for a comprehensible literary form – obedient, convincing, alive, breaking free from the limits of imagination, eager to step with his phantom foot into the harsh reality of paper.

“Who are you?” he said.

He disliked me from the very beginning. Something about me unsettled him –  perhaps the fact that I had been following him with a gun.

“Sorry if I frightened you.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said. His voice trembled slightly, though he tried not to show that he was afraid.
“Just tell me what you’re doing in my backyard.”

He had come out excessively handsome, though his silhouette seemed banal against the green of the trees, like a poorly remembered image from a film about writers. I was really never good at describing people.

“Why aren’t you answering?” the man said. “It’s rude, you know.”

Then I pointed the gun at him –  he cried out, raising his hand.

“What is that? What are you doing?”

“You simply don’t work,” I said. “I’m sorry. I could spend another year examining all the ways in which you don’t work, but I think it’s time to finish.”

“The end? No, no,” he said. “Be reasonable…”

He stopped moving. I was about to lower the gun when I suddenly realized that I had still not seen his face.

“Sorry,” I said. “You just don’t work.”

At that he whimpered softly, pleading:

“Maybe I don’t work now, but I can. I’ll improve, I promise. In the end everything will turn out well…”

I clicked some mechanism on the gun, noticing that I could not even properly describe the weapon – a terrible situation for someone writing about a pistol.

“All right, all right,” he said, still pleading despite the obviousness of his complete helplessness.
“Don’t shoot. I’ll leave. I’ll do something else. Just let me go. Don’t kill me.”

“Well…” I said. It was true, I had to admit.

All of this –  this stalking of my characters, even the scene itself, derivative, secondary, unreal. In this backyard where leaves grow from beneath the bark of trees, bending the laws of nature; where guns resemble only a distant memory of what a weapon is and where the trigger might be – the only truth I could grasp was the possibility of destroying all of it.

“But later perhaps I’ll find you in some file on my computer,” I said, “and again spend time trying to write you.”

“I promise I won’t,” he said. “If you see me, just ignore me. I’m leaving.”

He fumbled in the pockets of his gray, carefully pressed trousers with their sharp creases – these fucking gray trousers. It was difficult for me to resist throwing him out of this unreal field altogether. I didn’t care. I would call it an allusion, or better yet, my duty to the great ones.

My finger rested on the trigger, on the button: Trash Everything. Delete all. Into the bin.

“Don’t send me into the trash,” he said. “Please… please don’t…”

“Oh, God, fine,” I said. “Then go. Just go.”

He said nothing more – only smoothed his frock coat and ran.

He ran through the garden, thinking who knows what, and I stood on the grass, particles of soot settling on my face, waiting until he disappeared among the trees.