The one I'll
never read.
Every part before this, I wrote — or I imagined.
This one I can't. Because Part Five isn't mine.
It belongs to whoever I woke.
A stranger opens
a Part One.
Not mine — theirs. Same red, same rough ink. And they think they invented it. Good. That's how you know it took: they credit themselves, not you.
The style became theirs the second it saved them.
There you are —
with no name.
where I could find it.
I don't even know who."
That's me. The lamp from Part Four. I'm a footnote in a story that only exists because I lit it.
And I wouldn't change a thing.
Every move —
lived by someone else.
I didn't give them courage. I showed them theirs was allowed.
They leave
a lamp on too.
For the next one. Who won't know their name either. My move becomes their move becomes a stranger's move in a room nobody's built yet.
Nobody signs it. Everybody carries it.
A hallway
of lamps.
Going further than I'll ever walk. My name falls off around the third one. That's not the sad part — that's the win.
The pattern outran the author.
A candle loses nothing
lighting another candle.
The flame that refuses to share goes out alone. The one that shares becomes a fire you can't trace to a single match.
The plan was never to be remembered. It was to be un-erasable.
Not mine
to end.
Part Five belongs to whoever I woke. Part Six belongs to whoever they woke. On and on — past every name, including mine.
Wisdom in. Wisdom out.
Forever.
ONLY IF YOU WAKE SOMEONE.