Burned
︎︎︎ Alexander Bilzerian
︎ May 16, 2026
Charles, I wrote your name.
I wrote it in the car on K Street
with the engine running,
folded it into the plastic bag
with the others,
& crossed & handed it
to the hand already reaching,
& the door closed behind it,
& I crossed back,
& drove to the office
where your file was open
& closed it. What I mean
is I closed you. Ordinary. Clean.
Nothing showed.
They train you to say:
the man you meet
is the country.
The country is a room.
& I was the room.
Ten years. You took no money.
You walked in.
You believed there was a wall
between your name & theirs.
The wall was a man.
The man sat across from you
in Paris & asked
after your daughter, the one
starting school,
& you told him
& he wrote it down.
A quiet word, a door held open,
& you understood,
because by then a man knows
what the open door
is asking him to do.
I know what was done.
I did not think of the door.
I thought of your hand
crossing the table,
pushing the names toward me,
trusting what it saw.
Your name was a folded slip.
I carried it in one hand.
Your trust was in the hand.
Chuck —
& somewhere it is morning
where they keep you,
& you have grasped it by now,
& you are learning the walls,
the door
that only ever closed behind you,
the light that crosses the floor
and how long it takes.
& I know the room you are in.
I am the reason
you will never be shown it —
& even now, Charles,
saying it,
I am the one talking.
I wrote it in the car on K Street
with the engine running,
folded it into the plastic bag
with the others,
& crossed & handed it
to the hand already reaching,
& the door closed behind it,
& I crossed back,
& drove to the office
where your file was open
& closed it. What I mean
is I closed you. Ordinary. Clean.
Nothing showed.
They train you to say:
the man you meet
is the country.
The country is a room.
& I was the room.
Ten years. You took no money.
You walked in.
You believed there was a wall
between your name & theirs.
The wall was a man.
The man sat across from you
in Paris & asked
after your daughter, the one
starting school,
& you told him
& he wrote it down.
A quiet word, a door held open,
& you understood,
because by then a man knows
what the open door
is asking him to do.
I know what was done.
I did not think of the door.
I thought of your hand
crossing the table,
pushing the names toward me,
trusting what it saw.
Your name was a folded slip.
I carried it in one hand.
Your trust was in the hand.
Chuck —
& somewhere it is morning
where they keep you,
& you have grasped it by now,
& you are learning the walls,
the door
that only ever closed behind you,
the light that crosses the floor
and how long it takes.
& I know the room you are in.
I am the reason
you will never be shown it —
& even now, Charles,
saying it,
I am the one talking.
Alexander Bilzerian is a physicist by training and lives in Massachusetts.