Click‑‑the world begins.
Yesterday exists only in the mind of the all‑knowing.
Tissue paper falls in soggy, dark waters.
The hard, cylindrical roll slips out, and it’s spinning.
The roll is a lever without a fulcrum.
It is a ball without rotation.
It has one solitary position.
The tissue paper is a network composed of sogginess
atoms and sogginess messages. Something infiltrates the
sogginess and squeezes out the wetness and dampness.
What does the squeezing? Dampeners do.
Self‑seeking dampeners find their way into the soggy tissue paper
pulling the moisture out and allowing the tissue paper
to tightly bind itself to the cylindrical roll again.
The roll is now bound again
and ready to receive dampening.
Ben Beyerlein
is a writer and artist living in Glen Ellyn,