The Erasure Poet

The world had forgotten Arthur Vale, and in time, Arthur Vale had almost forgotten himself. He lived in a cramped apartment that smelled of damp paper and regret, a monument to a single, catastrophic failure: his first and only published poetry collection, *Silt and Ash*.

It had been eviscerated. The reviews used words like “amateurish,” “derivative,” and, most damningly, “sincere in its mediocrity.” The single printing moldered in discount bins before being pulped. His publisher dropped him. His ambition curdled into a bitter, private vinegar.

Twenty years later, he was a ghost haunting second-hand bookshops, flinching at the sight of successful poets’ names on glossy covers. His life was a palimpsest, the faint, faded text of his dreams overwritten by the stark, dull ink of reality.

The change began, as such things often do, in the dust. He was in the basement of “The Final Chapter,” a cluttered, labyrinthine bookstore, looking for anything he could hock for a few dollars. His fingers, grimy with the residue of neglected lives, brushed against a book bound not in cloth or leather, but in what felt like dried, hardened skin. There was no title on the spine, only a symbol: a circle with a line struck through it, like a universal null.

Inside, the text was a chaotic scrawl of languages, some recognizably Latin and Greek, others composed of jagged, impossible glyphs. But nestled within the madness was a passage in clear, if archaic, English. It spoke of “The Unbinding,” a ritual for creators. It promised to sever the spiritual and existential tether of one’s “greatest failure,” to not merely destroy it, but to unwrite it from the ledger of existence. The work, and all memory of it, would be gone. As if it had never been.

A desperate, crazy hope flared in Arthur’s chest. *Silt and Ash*. His greatest failure. What if he could simply… make it go away? What if he could step into a world where that humiliation had never happened?

The ritual was simple, yet grotesque. It required a personal item tied to the failure—he chose the lone, dog-eared copy of *Silt and Ash* he kept as a form of self-flagellation. It had to be burned in a flame fed by his own breath and a drop of his blood, all while chanting the Unbinding verse.

He did it that night in his sink, the acrid smell of burning paper and something eerily metallic filling the room. As the last page curled to black, a profound silence fell, a silence that felt less like an absence of sound and more like a presence—a great, hungry emptiness. Then, he passed out cold on the floor.

He awoke to sunlight and the insistent ring of his phone. It was a number he didn’t recognize. Groggily, he answered.

“Mr. Vale! Finally! This is Lydia Chase from *The Paris Review**. We’re utterly desperate to reprint ‘Axiom of Ruin’ for our next issue. We know it’s a hallmark, but it’s just so… seminal. We’ll pay whatever fee you ask.”

Arthur sat up, his head swimming. *Axiom of Ruin*? He’d never written a poem by that title. He stammered a reply, hung up, and stumbled to his laptop.

His inbox was a torrent of emails. Editors, academics, fans. All praising him. All referencing poems he had no memory of writing. A frantic search revealed his name everywhere. He was hailed as the author of *Chiaroscuro*, the legendary, elusive collection that had redefined modern poetry. It was taught in universities, quoted in articles, spoken of in hushed, reverent tones. There were lines cited that made his breath catch—they were beautiful, profound, everything he’d ever wanted to be.

He had done it. The Unbinding had worked. It had erased *Silt and Ash* and in its place, the universe had retroactively woven a masterpiece.

The first few weeks were a delirious dream. He gave readings from “his” work, relying on a terrifying, newfound charisma that felt like a suit borrowed from a better man. He signed contracts. He drank expensive wine. He was Arthur Vale, the celebrated poet.

The first crack in this perfect new reality appeared at a literary gala. A gaunt, tired-looking woman approached him. Her form seemed to flicker under the crystal lights.

“Arthur?” she said, her voice faint, as if coming from a great distance. “Don’t you remember me? Clara. Clara Evans. I was your first editor. I was the one who… who…”

Her sentence trailed off into a confused murmur. She looked down at her own hands, a frown creasing her face. “I was the one who… what?” she whispered. Then she shook her head, gave him a weak, apologetic smile, and wandered away. He noticed people didn’t quite look at her; their gazes slid off her like water off glass.

A cold dread began to pool in his stomach. Clara Evans. She had been the junior editor who’d championed *Silt and Ash*, then been publicly shamed for its failure. It had derailed her career.

A few days later, he thought of Michael Brant, his childhood bully who’d mocked his early poems relentlessly. On a whim, he searched for him online. Nothing. He called an old mutual friend.

“Michael? Michael who?” the friend said, his voice blank. “Are you sure you have the right name, Arthur? Doesn’t ring a bell at all.”

Arthur ended the call, his hand trembling. He rushed back to the ancient book, to the original passage he’d translated. He read it again, and this time, he saw the horrible truth he’d missed in his desperate haste.

It did not erase the *work*. It erased the *concept* of the work. And a work’s existence is not just ink and paper. It is the editor who shaped it, the critic who reviewed it, the rival who envied it, the bully who inspired its defiant rage. The failure of *Silt and Ash* was a node in a web of human connections. The Unbinding hadn’t dissolved the book; it had dissolved the people tangled in its narrative. It had erased the witnesses to his shame.

His masterpiece, *Chiaroscuro*, was a phantom. It was a beautiful edifice built on a foundation of non-people. His fame was a negative space, a silhouette defined by the absences around him.

The horror of it paralyzed him. But then, a new email arrived. It was from the committee for the prestigious Sterling Prize, the highest honour in poetry. He was the unanimous choice. The ceremony was in a month.

And he knew, with a sickening certainty, that he wanted it. He craved it. The adoration was a drug, and he was addicted.

He looked in the mirror and saw a man growing more solid, more real, more *celebrated* by the day. And he understood the terrible mechanics of his success. His newfound substance was being siphoned from others. To maintain it, to grow it, he would need to feed the emptiness.

The ritual required a “greatest failure.” But the book had been delightfully vague on definitions. What was failure but a matter of perspective?

He thought of Julian Croft, a middling poet who had just published a lukewarm review of one of Arthur’s public readings. A slight. A minor failure in Arthur’s new world. Could that be enough?

He obtained a copy of Julian’s book, a pathetic volume called *Urban Pastoral*. He performed the ritual again, this time designating the book as the symbol of Julian’s critical failure against him.

The next day, Julian Croft was gone. Not dead. Erased. His books vanished from shelves, his author bio from websites. No one remembered him. And Arthur Vale woke up to a glowing profile in *The New Yorker*, hailing the “mysterious depth” of a previously overlooked poem in *Chiaroscuro*.

A thrill of monstrous power coursed through him. It was so easy.

He became a connoisseur of slights. A fellow poet who received a grant he coveted. A old professor who had once given him a C. A journalist who asked an impertinent question. Each was a failure in the narrative of Arthur Vale. Each was a thread to be pulled, a person to be un-written.

He grew more famous, more revered. His readings were packed. His new poems (which he now wrote himself, fueled by this terrifying process) were hailed as dark, revolutionary masterpieces. He was the most important voice of his generation.

He sat in his luxurious new study, the original Unbinding book open on his desk. He was preparing for the Sterling Prize ceremony. He had to be perfect. There was a young, talented poet—a woman named Elara with startlingly clear eyes—who was gaining attention. She represented a potential future failure, a challenger to his throne. Her first chapbook lay on the desk beside the ritual candle.

He pricked his finger, let a drop of blood fall onto the chapbook’s cover. The title, *Fallow Fields*, began to smudge.

He took a deep breath, ready to feed the flame, to breathe another life into the hungry silence that now lived within him. He looked at his reflection in the dark window. He was the picture of success. Solid. Real. Untouchable.

And in the glass, for a fleeting second, he saw the ghost of a transparent, forgotten man standing behind him—a man who had once written bad poetry and dreamed of being seen. Arthur blinked, and the apparition was gone.

He felt a pang of something—remorse, fear, he couldn’t name it. He hesitated, the match trembling in his hand.

Then he thought of the Sterling Prize. The stage. The applause. The legacy.

He struck the match.

“The things we do for our art,” Arthur Vale whispered to his reflection, and he began to chant.

***

**Word Count:** 1,599