You.

In the beginning they were just shapes attached
to sounds, and you could only see the things to
which they gave meaning ?what?

Tiny black spider itches of vague form.......
they flew into you at a billion miles an hour
filling recesses that defied your description
because they:

were the description.

and with each assimilation, you were consuming
a potential ...... and changing yourself.

They bought the basics: love, and hate
and the things that mark time.
But with each use they consumed parts of
the original and the original was you ...
willing more of you into existence:

without effort or intent.

And the subtlety came into play. The paradox
of meaning-form that spawned

:here is nothing
:this is blank
?what?

But the ?what? you took for granted,
while your narrower focus was playing a game with
small preoccupations, things:

without real meaning.

The old man looked at you with crow-eyes, and
he was ?what? looking into you. Follow yourself down
the trail of shared reflections, and you find that
half of them are his.

You can imagine his hard beak as it ?what? ...
it probed nothing less than a soul, and it was
a shiny trinket to him. But it was yours.
And you were him. A Summary:

of a Life