The last time I saw him, he was penning these hazy thoughts. It was probably only seconds ago, but time is dizziness 
even when one pens it onto the face of a watch. I broke my 
stopwatch for him to draw nearer. He glazed me into stillness, 
matting me as if in preparation for a frame. My predecessors 
either wore veils or were hastened toward turmoil at the sight 
of him. He heaved silence-years out of our encounter and whispered 
like a breeze, “Each silence-year is like a thousand of yours.” 
Then he sucked up the ink from my notes and introduced himself as the
Omniscient. I laughed until tears washing away my choked surprise as well 
as the title of my writing. What does he know that I don’t? 
“What is there to know once you meet me?” he retorted.   
“You are larger than my thoughts,” I penned while watching my lips tremble uttering his name.
“Wrong,” he said, “you are simply getting smaller. Soon, even your breath 
will outweigh you and your shadow will outpace you.”  
I hate to lose weight because of the size of my interlocutor. 
I penned this grim outlook and sheltered it with a period. 
“Why the period?” he asked. “Nothing ends down below except life.” 
“That’s enough to kill a sentence.” I penned again more notes, aware he was watching; 
I noted my ill ease taking the shape of distress. 
“I am the omniscient and I am telling you not to bury birds, be they pigeons or crows.”  
I held my quill right between me and his voice, keeping only one eye open, taking aim 
over the pen’s sharp tip as if to pierce him. 
“How can a lack sharpen one’s sight?” he asked, as he passed a hand over my notes and added, 
“The horizon that expands blinds those who watch it. Isn’t that ridiculous?” He then disappeared 
like a breeze, as when one falls asleep unexpectedly. My notes remained as placed on my scroll, 
as if uncertain whether they too should disappear, or not. I forgot to ask him about the length 
of one silence-year. He might have said, “Like a thousand of yours,” offering just an approximation. 
I don’t even know how long one of our years really is.  I count my years backwards, and never tally 
the resulting numbers. Why would I wish to know how many years I have left?
The one who can see the end never looks for the beginning.
My notes fell dead before my eyes. I could salvage only a few letters; the bulk had already 
gone. I have no memory of what I meant to say; nor do I remember the shapes of the characters 
that I had already penned. My vision of him shuffled even the possibility of meaning. Did I really see him? 
I will always wonder how much of the visible world I can see, and how often and for how long I can remember its features.