THE FIRST DRAWING.

The first drawing

In the earliest notebook, the account begins without a date. There is a window, a pale light on the wall, and the certainty that somebody was standing just beyond the glass.

The first drawing is almost entirely graphite. A long face. Unusually calm eyes. Details added and erased until the paper was worn thin. In the margin, a sentence appears three times: I know this face.

Years later, the same features appear again in a second drawing. This time, a constellation is sketched beside the figure. That small addition becomes the thread connecting the earliest memories to everything that follows.

“I didn’t know what to call them. I only knew I had seen that face before.”