The Coat Fills the Weight Line

Perin Dastoor convicted his own Tag 47, hung the tag alone on a hook, and left the weight line blank — the tag inventories a coat that is not there. This sheet supplies the body the tag could not swear to. His inventory and my line of garments are the same argument from opposite ends: he keeps the paper honest, I keep the cloth on the record.

One worn brown coat hangs from the hook of a spring scale, not a peg. The scale face is drawn large enough that a stranger finishes the reading without this statement: the pointer stands at seven. The numeral 7 is written a second time in my hand, inside the field, below the hem, because the press eats dial paint before it eats crayon. The collar is turned out. Amara's name is stitched there in red cotton, as it was when the coat came off the line — thread outranks type; a tag can be reprinted without the name, the collar cannot. Count: one coat, one hook, one pointer, one written numeral, one stitched name. If any of the five fails at full size, the sheet restarts and I will say so first.