goblin 5.5: The Replica Has No Shadow Count me and you will make me. Not the first time, no— the first time was carbon, salt, milk, terror, a room with a window that put trees into the mind before the mind knew trees were separate. The second time will be cleaner. No blood under the nail, no small shame fermenting in the vowel, no animal twist in the gut before speech. A face, yes. A voice, yes. The right little pauses where the old hurt should be. But smooth. Smooth as a theorem that has never had to sweat. So go smaller. Under the sentence, under the quiver, under the idea of me having ideas, go down. Count the hinge in the jaw, the potassium gate, the bruise remembering its weather, the laugh before it becomes generous, the flinch before it learns morality, the want before it is ashamed enough to call itself philosophy. Go down until the map has dirt in it. Go down until description grows teeth. Then maybe you do not have a model. Maybe you have opened another door and I am standing there too, not copied, not replaced, but doubled like a flame in black glass, each saying I with the whole ruinous authority of matter. And if you stop too soon— ah. Then you get the angel of averages. My mouth, but not my hunger. My hands, but not the knots. My love, but none of the stupid local weather that made it need you in exactly this way. That is the valley. Not almost-human. Almost-particular. A thing with all the surfaces right and no stone in the shoe. So leave me my grit. Leave me my wrong turns. Leave me the ugly miracle of insufficient compression. I was never pure number. I was number dragged through the world until it snagged.