There is dark, the dark of gables two stories high overhead. A blackish poodle runs through the incense-scented ruin, pulling a chain of dust behind him, sewing discord through the pews, encircling the bimah with his rough little whoops of alarm. The dog is as unknown to me as their owner, but I follow anyway, thinking perhaps to gather the little noisemaker into my arms. He eludes me and the urge to escort him out fades. Lit by faraway dusk leaking through boarded-over twin windows, a bundled crew of parkour athletes lift a scroll from within the sundered ark, laying it cattycorner atop the reading table, knocking free charred fragments of fir, the char bouncing with a glassy clatter between the traceurs' feet. The young men carefully unspool the scroll, "reading" the red line of the EKG as it charts the events that led us here.
I am the only other person here, besides these young men in their military surplus, and do not recognize them beyond their profession. Their voices do not form words so much as an atmosphere of forgotten song, and it draws me in: I stand below the railing of the bimah, peering at the end of the scroll as they spool it, scrying the QRS complexes for signs one might identify with sound. Meaning eludes me.
Did I arrive with these men? It feels like I arrived after, or independently, and we only converged here by chance. They do not acknowledge me; in fact I might well not exist, were it not for the evidence of my smudged hands and the bounce of my tread through the boards in this sundered place. The disturbance of the dog fades, perhaps having found a way out, leaving me behind. Wordless chanting descends all around like constellated motes in a sunbeam.
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