Long room memories have invisible elephants

In human nature you find the drive to overcome. This may manifest as an individual’s slow, mistake-prone plodding against the cards he’s dealt or, in the case of the group, through war, to take. I haven’t asked about my sentence, haven’t needed to. This place, where the stone gray walls slime at dawn, where open windows have rusted brown bars that’d allow me to escape were I less an arm, it’s got legible history, in fine script, scrawled through green grime on the floor.

“I must have saved everything,” one starts. No date given. They don’t want you to know what time or day it is but I’ve at least kept track. It’s been thirteen days since my arrest, since my swift internment in this cell.

“I must have remembered everything, and they were able to read it out. They know.” The penmanship, masculine, is surely from a learned hand for handwriting, as an art, has been long lost. We few writers who’ve kept that fire lit are now sought after as political enemies, as heretics, as witches and warlocks.