Dead time

So this stone marks the place of the house that Jack built. The stone has two ears and a nose and an eye in the middle of its forehead – just like Jack. The stone bears the stones of other houses – mottled as a concrete mongrel. Grass invades the crevices of its pitted-pebbled scalp and that mouldy smell of long-gone summer. Remember? This stone is from the house that marks the place that Jack built. Dead as this Jack is the house the stone killed. Dead as this Jack is the weight of the stone’s guilt, is the possibility that Jack and the house and the stone once filled.

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