The Frame III — Archive

THE FRAME III — ARCHIVE

Every archive begins

with a decision about what deserves to last.

Not what happened.

What deserves to last.

*

The boxes are labeled in pencil.

Dates. Names. Locations.

The bureaucracy of memory

doing what bureaucracy does —

filing the present

into a past

that someone else will open.

Or won't.

*

Consider the passive voice.

It was decided.

Mistakes were made.

Lives were lost.

No subject.

No hand on the lever.

No face behind the policy.

The passive voice is not grammar.

It is architecture —

a building designed

with no entrance

and no exit

and no windows

facing the street.

*

Power does not rewrite history.

It is more elegant than that.

It simply controls

the humidity in the room

where history is stored.

Too much moisture —

the ink runs.

Too little —

the paper cracks.

Either way,

the document becomes

unreadable.

Either way,

no one is responsible.

*

Silent sentences

shape the loudest arguments.

What was omitted?

What was italicised?

What received a footnote

when it deserved a chapter?

Whose name appears

only in relation to another name —

never sovereign,

never the subject of its own sentence?

*

The museum decided

which canvases survive the century.

The archive decided

which voices get a box.

The headline gave the frequency —

and frequency, over time,

becomes what we call

memory.

And memory, over time,

becomes what we call

truth.

*

There are rooms in this building

that have not been opened

in forty years.

Not because the key is lost.

Because no one

has been asked

to look.

Spoken

"This music was created by DiscoPrincess — Royalty of the Night"