I
spotted buried
in the appendix
proofs at Minotrew, a verb
that leans backward, were, for three seconds it
glows on my screen before the correction order coughs through the telescreen. The
chute yawns like a mouth, my finger hovers over send, the page updates, the past is repaired, but the syllable burrows.
In new speed there is no room to lean only to stand. I sign out, drift past the two minutes and slip into the pearl quarter where the air smells of soap and rain.
In a junk shop window, a small glass round as an eye, a paperweight trapping a curl of pale paper and a bubble of air. I buy it for nothing I can afford. Back home I write it tiny on a torn scrap, were. I tilt the paperweight and the word distort swims, multiplies a
whole tense blooms like a reef. Bells ring somewhere far off, names I almost remember, and for a moment the room brightens with the light without edges. Then the telescreen clears its throat and the memory hole exhales. I let the scrap go. Smoke eats it. The glass stays cool in my palm. Years later, in a quiet building that needs no slogans, a curator dusts a cracked paperweight labeled. Relic, airstrip one, ministry of truth, inside clings a browned curl of paper where an ink blot suggests a letter. The curator squints guesses a word that leans backward. She whispers it, an ordinary word, and the city's bells answer as if they always had.