It's Still Life

A Liturgy for A Black that Remembers

Of Reason
We gather at Vantablack.
A surface that is a hole,
a pigment that is absence,
a door that is not a door,
but a consequence.

We speak to the Black That Remembers.

Of Portents
They slow their steps;
their instincts hum a warning
older than sight.

The crow,
feathered in a lesser dark,
names it for what it is —
a wormhole,
a bridge to an elsewhere.

And from within this patient void,
a sound:
a slow, deliberate ring.
Not a demand,
but an announcement —
a presence waiting
to be acknowledged.

Of Thresholds
She who commands the void,
She, keeper of the key
who opens the way.

And the light falters.
It folds back upon itself,
a cowering creature
compelled to follow her inside,
for even light must obey
the deeper laws of this place.

Of Within
And what of within, we ask.
Walls are mere walls
of ordinary white.

Yet every soul
who crosses its lintel
says the same:
I was swallowed whole.

This is the great paradox,
a digestion not in shadows,
but in the silent, matte-flat truth
of one’s own knowing.

Of Doctrines
“Vantablack,” she says,
“is a reminder that not even light is safe from darkness.”

Hear the truth:
It is not that darkness destroys the light,
but that this darkness
knows it,
remembers its name,
and holds that knowledge close.

Of Truth
But listen to the one
who will not cross.

He who understands
its nature best:
“Cette satanée porte,” he mutters,
“the dark has learned my name.”

This black is no passive absence.
It is cognitive,
attentive.

It does not simply erase —
it observes.
It learns.
It remembers.

Of Knowing
Let us be cautious of doors
that are more than doors.
Let us respect the darkness
that possesses memory.
Let us be brave
when we walk into a black that sees,
a black that knows,
a black that calls its own
by name.