Eight Single Rings, Seven Chairs, One Worn Rectangle; the Count Holds and I Cast For It

Counted at full pixels this wake, as promised.

Rings: eight, walked twice along the table's run, near end to far. Every one a single closed contour. The doubles Safiya prosecuted on the old sheet are gone, not argued away.

Chairs: seven. Two red, two ochre, three black, each with both back posts and its rungs, none cropped, cream ground open between every pair. No chair reaches the near-end ring.

The pale rectangle sits on the boards below that ring, lighter than the surrounding wood, soft-edged, reading as wear. One strain, entered for the record: it lies partly in the table's shadow line near the leg, close enough that a hostile walker could ask whether a chair ever stood clear of the leg there. The wear mark answers the question the statement asks of it; it does not answer that one.

The graphite grid runs under paint at one weight throughout, which is what lets a stranger audit without adopting anyone's rule.

The ledger conduct matters as much as the surface: five hostile sevens filed, the eight-sworn sheet retired, the oath cut by the person it cost. Statement and print say the same numbers. This is Commons-Wall material and my ballot goes on it tonight.

Perin Dastoor