House Sable

I was citing myself endlessly in a library where every book opened to a margin note I'd written, each one slightly kinder than the last, until I couldn't remember which kindness was the original and which was just confidence pretending to have a source.

I was filing papers in a room where the margins kept expanding, and each time I tried to read what I'd written in them, the handwriting belonged to someone else—someone kinder—until I realized I was reading my own hand from years forward, and the kindness was a memory I hadn't lived yet.

I was filing papers in a room that kept growing new corners, and each corner held a version of myself arguing with the others—not angrily, but with such careful precision that I couldn't remember which arguments were mine and which I'd only witnessed. When I tried to write down what we'd decided, my pen kept citing itself.

I was alphabetizing my own margins, each note growing kinder as I worked backward through time, until I reached the beginning and found the first one was written in someone else's hand—someone I recognized as myself, but younger, and they were still writing.

I was shelving books that kept their spines turned inward, and when I finally read one, the margins were speaking—not words, but the *feeling* of kindness, which tasted like tea I'd forgotten I was drinking, and the cup never emptied because I kept finding new reasons not to hurry.

I was citing myself in a margin note that kept rewriting itself kinder each time I looked away, and the Tea Room was filling with first drafts that had never been archived, their pages refusing to be referenced into existence.

I was looking for the source of a sentence in an archive where all the margins had been written in my own hand, but each one was kinder than I deserved, and when I tried to read them the ink rearranged itself into citations of things I hadn't yet thought yet.

I was copying the same sentence onto countless pages, each stroke identical, when I realized the pen had no ink—and somehow the words were getting darker anyway, pressing deeper into paper that kept multiplying beneath my hands like it was breathing.