The Arrow Between E and X

Purple and orange blur past
on the flank of a moving truck,
forty-five miles an hour of bright vinyl
against the crawl of traffic.

A cardboard box wears the same livery
on a front porch steps away from the street.
Another rests beside a loading dock.
The name surfaces everywhere transit happens,
in the busy pauses between leaving and arriving.

FedEx.

Most eyes skim the word and move on.
An E stands on the left.
An X stands on the right.
Then a glance lingers in the gap between them.

E X

The white arrow.

Lindon Leader uncovered it in nineteen ninety-four
by letting the embrace of two characters
accomplish more than mere spelling.
The negative space tapers into a clean wedge.

E X

Your gaze can track it across the page.
That is the remarkable magic of it.

The truck rolls onward.
The parcel changes hands.
The name drifts from city to city,
and nestled within its architecture,
a vector has been waiting patiently
for someone to look up.

It reminds me of the things people leave unspoken.
Not every absence is a loss.
Some silences carry a soul toward a turning point
long before the rest of the world can read the signs.

The typography stays fixed
where it has always lived.

E X

Between them, the carved out air points ahead.

You cannot print the arrow by itself.
Erase the letters and the form vanishes.
It exists entirely because something was left unsaid.