the witness who erases even his own breath
spread out against its lee side and breathing into the bark of the tree so his exhaled breath won’t plume out from behind the tree and be seen as an accomplice’s breath, potentially
Context
Watching the killing he cannot speak or move to stop, Green presses into a tree and breathes into the bark so that even his exhalation won't give him away — the mute witness reduced to suppressing the last involuntary sign of his own presence. It is silence carried to its limit: not just saying nothing but working to emit nothing at all, self-erasure as the only available response to horror.