THE DELETED MAN

Typing the title and erasing the front in order to make it more concise.  The subject begins to take shape.  No.  Not yet.  There is another way.  No.  Putting it back the way it was.  There was not another way.  There never was.  Now the title has something resembling a person.

The man found a missing section of the fence at the end of the park.  He passed through and half noticed thoughts that had been cut off mid-sentence or so - if that is what they were - or the manner in which they could be referred to.

He walked on into harder terrain that did not retain his footsteps.  They became or were prints of a fainter quality and off they went to thereabouts.  The breeze became a thinner barrier to no more.  As it disappeared, the sun's heat erased what little issued in the way of expression from him.  Not by himself - not him.  Today is being swiftly undone along with whatever came before.  Whatever did.  Perhaps it did - not by him.  Any?  Any more?  Not as many as he thought.  Not as many as he thought together.  Numbers.  The numbers were overestimated yet again.  Being adjusted down and less.

The landscape took him further away and down into an area of lower and less elevation than loftier memories.  Perhaps not so lofty as he supposed.  Suppose not.  In a time when more was not enough.

And now as the wind increased. There was more neglected land and unused space or abandoned it was or will be.  The dust.  The dust rose up and he did not enter or become surrounded by it.  He just became less.  And that finally - for a change - or not.  Was enough.


- Max Stoltenberg