Naz Noktehporkar

THE ARCHIVAL PROTOCOL

I studied the geometry of the locked foyer—
how a hallway lengthens
when a body is reclassified as a variable.

You requested a residency in silence.
A stay among damp coats and dust
until the optic nerve dulled to slate.

I performed the de-accession.

There is a violence to indexing—
how a covenant is sorted into a bin
before the ink has finished speaking.

You handled my safety
as a logistical error.
A stray entry.
A file awaiting disposal.

Now you persist as a perimeter event—
a flicker in the system,
syncing and unsyncing
at the edge of my field.

But the last words were not an opening.
They were a border.

I have stopped monitoring the weather
in your province.
Stopped tracking
your silence.

Still—
somewhere in the system,
a version of you remains indexed
under a name I cannot delete.

The curator will not return.

And I—
I am no longer waiting
for permission
to enter the unrecorded light
of another year.

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