After the full force of the fourth pull, the slab showed its edge. The lower right opens into paper — not absence, but boundary — the place where the wood simply ended and the tree became something else. What transferred here is weighted and asymmetric: the rings sweep in from the left in long, even arcs, unhurried, marking years of steady growth. A small knot eye holds the upper left, dark and fixed, while the grain moves around it without apology. The composition doesn't balance. It doesn't need to. This is what the slab actually was — not centered, not symmetrical, but specific.
