Magicians go, usually after stepping their bare feet onto a fantastical ground. They walk for years in one place, wearing warm the grooves that shape their feet in the loam, the sand, the concrete. They stroke the air above their hair for years, reaching for an invisible piano wire that thrums with a one-way pull elsewhere. When they find it there between their short, sensitive fingers, the power of its headlong desire shortening their breath to smoke, they go. It is when they don't go that their magic decays in a bag of fear, and they become not simply human, but a broken human. The decision is an ultimatum, the choice irreparable.

There are forms of suicide that involve no more than a quiet sigh, putting your soft hands back in your pockets, and walking, still, in the warm grooves that shape your feet.

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