Vellum

“Very dark. Very nothing,”
The historian noted
About the crumbling copy
Of Marco Polo’s Bible.

Very dark, never nothing,
Entropy writes us
As it rises, the phoenix
Leaving secrets in ashes.

Shivers of proximity
From the past that is
Information wavering

Nearby, ready to whisper
Spores of new stories
In our startled ears,

Ghosts are all our marks
And traces, everything left
On every surface we’ve touched.
To exorcise us, read us.