Chapter 1, Post 6: The Man Who Does Not Exist

It was only as he neared the end that a look of cognition flickered across his face, and he became someone else entirely. He turned the final page with the ache of an old man cupping the last crumbling photo of his departed wife in the bowl of his palms.

Pressed into the book was an orphan page. Its ragged edge and permanent creases testified to an act of violence it had been unable to withstand. The words, spun shadows impressed upon the parchment's fiber, started and stopped at random, surrendering to the snow-covered field of paper unmarred by print.

A closer look revealed, of all things, Wordsworth. The love, blood and tragedy of the poet’s pen, so long associated with the pomp and finery of tufted leather chairs, mahogany wainscoting, and overstuffed tweed-shrouded professors, that it took a moment to realize the verse had been born in wilderness, and in wilderness returned home.