Fragment No. 36

Through the Lens, the White Begins to Speak

A stream in fragments

There is a fragment.

And another.

A thread loosed from time, unraveling not toward conclusion,

but toward a trembling question.

You lean in.

Through the lens—ah, that quiet circle of glass—

you do not see what you expect.

No clarity, no certainty.

Only a soft murmur,

a hum that rises where vision slips and boundaries blur.

The object blurs.

You blur.

Something gives.

And there, where the pattern breaks—

where the weft has vanished into war, or time, or silence—

you find white.

A white still, waiting,

a white that holds its breath.

You pause, as if to hear the answer in the hush between two breaths.

Why not a shadow?

Why this field, this absence shaped by intention,

this so-called neutrality that claims no history—

yet floats atop so many?

Through the lens, white is not pure.

It is dense.

It is layered with centuries.

It is the sheet draped over something unspeakable.

It is the silence in a room after something breaks.

It is the memory we pretend not to carry.

You try to see through it,

but the view resists.

The white obscures.

Gently, like fog wrapping a hillside.

asking

What is being kept from view?

Or rather—what has been rendered invisible

by the illusion of transparency?

You move your gaze. The lens moves with you.

Shapes drift. Focus slips.

And still the question remains.

Not demanding, not sharp—

only steady, patient.

The white sits where threads once were.

Where color lived.

Where hands worked.

It marks the loss, yes,

but also, perhaps, protects it.

Preserves the wound from being stitched too neatly.

What if this is not a gap?

What if it is a space held open—

a pause in the sentence,

a breath drawn before the next thought arrives?

And the carpet, the fragment, the journey—

it is all still speaking.

Even in pieces.

Especially in pieces.

So you linger.

Not to solve, not to mend,

but to wonder.

And in this wondering,

a different kind of seeing begins.

Not the kind that dominates or collects,

but the kind that listens.

Listens to the whiteness that is not blank,

to the absence that is not empty,

to the fragment that does not need to be whole

in order to be alive.