The d’s and t’s in his childhood scrapbook have long backs and straight spines and his capital letters swirl with youthful pride. The script in his work files is neat but scratchy, the t’s loop and the b’s hunch over. “How much time do you have?” I remember him joking after his second diagnosis, when I asked him to write something, anything, his hand shaking, letters faint, little ghosts on the page, opening, dissolving, more and more loops and more and more holes, until it all became holes, empty, a blank page, just like before, before he ever existed.