2025.05.28
Jane had never been one person. She was a gallery of faces, a curator of life was added to the soft crease of the memory. Its role was not to be remembered but by layer – layer – stories that others had forgotten.
In the Bureau of Blood Records, he worked alone, with Parbasi Portrait all around the time and secrets. Every morning, she would choose an image, often disappear from identity and hold it against her reflection. Through this fusion, the past shone unconsciously on its skin – lines, eyes, pieces of text emerge like ghosts in its features.
Today, the image he chose was barely there. Half the face behind a pan of an unclear script. Most archives abandoned it, and described it as very bad, very illegal. But Jane knew better. He slowly pressed her on her face and closed her eyes.
The words began to be compatible.
They did not read – they were felt. A letter was once lost in the pocket of a war -torn coat. Never sent a farewell. A story about a girl named Marla who sold flowers on the flooded train platform and whispered to passengers in their invented languages. His image was linked to a history that tried to forget it.
But did not forget the gene.
By night, the layers were softened. Mariela’s smile wandered unconsciously on Jane’s lips. A phrase – just one – broken through static: “Looking to live.”
Jane shook her head and cautiously raised the picture for the last time, put it on the wall of the bureau’s witnesses, where forgotten faces were remembered again.
Tomorrow, another face will wait. And the gene, sometimes the patient, would open it.