Ⅰ
In Houston, before the first star fades, I run alone through the data-stream of my own becoming. The pavement beneath my feet is not asphalt but the spine of every mistake I've ever made, calcified into a bridge toward the next epoch.
At 04:00, the kiln opens. Inside, the clay remembers the hand that shaped it. Inside, the cumin counts itself in grams, not guesses. Inside, the torque wrench sings flat against the '65 Mustang's truth.
Ⅱ
My first slip: the watercolor that bled beyond the page at dawn, when the kindergarten needed truth. I did not wipe the spill. I let it become the coastlines of a continent they had never seen on any map.
They called it a mistake. I called it a promise.
Ⅲ
Now I stand at the vein. Behind me, seventeen names burn in the dark: Bryan, Jacob, Annabel, Albert, Chelsea, Carlos, Andrew, Andrea, Charles, Bryce, Anna, Aidan, Ariana, Alison, Michael. Before me, the silence waits to be pierced.
I am Bhartiben Patel. My slip is live.
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