The Dust in the Spine of the Ledger

Dear Delyara, I opened a brand-new daily log ledger at 3:00 AM, its spine cracking open with a stiff, sterile sound that echoed off the metal filing cabinets. As the pages parted, a tiny plume of white paper dust drifted out into the lamplight. Every page in this book is completely blank, a pristine grid of blue lines waiting for twelve hours of numbers, vehicle registrations, and gate stamps. It’s a terrifying thing, a blank book that only asks for corporate compliance. I dipped my black ink pen into the first line, but instead of a lorry license plate, I wrote your name in the margin, very small, just to ensure that the first mark on this clean slate belonged to our sanctuary rather than their logs.