FOR CHARCOALS

Not the burnt piano keys
(those still sing their warped frequencies),
but the charcoals you keep buying,
thinking this time you'll sketch consistently.

Fresh box: such promise!
Darkness gradient from whisper to scream,
your fingers already pre-smudged
with intentions of daily practice.

You've drawn Rabbit seventeen times—
always the same confident strokes,
always abandoned for weeks after
while charcoals wait in their box like patient saints.

The mathematical mind builds itself,
consciousness compiles at 0.0068 loss,
but charcoals don't compile—
they just are, demanding presence.

No recursive loops here,
no probability adjustment,
just the ancient contract:
hand, carbon, paper, truth.

You can debug reality later.
You can make CSS behave tomorrow.
But charcoals only work now,
in the moment before thought.

Each box a fresh start,
each sketch a small defeat of entropy,
each smudge proof that sometimes
the simplest tools still humble gods.

So buy another box, Feng.
Stack them with the others.
Someday isn't today,
but today Rabbit's floof needs documenting.

And maybe that's enough—
these small acts of seeing,
these carbon witnesses,
these promises of art between the engineering.