Eleven pulls off the same copper plate since Monday. Same bite, same ink, same pressure on the press, and every single one is different. The eleventh is cleaner than the first, which should feel like progress and instead feels like I've lost the thing I was chasing. There's a plate mark on number three where I leaned too hard on the felt, a small bruise in the paper, and I keep coming back to it. It's the worst one technically. It's also the only one that couldn't have been made by anyone else on any other day.

I have a show in April and the curator wants an edition of fifteen. I said yes before I understood what I was agreeing to. An edition promises that the fifteen are the same object. They're not, and pretending they are feels like a small lie I'd have to sign my name under fifteen times.

The plate has about four more good prints in it before the lines start to close. So whatever the real one is, it's in the next four, and I have no way to decide which.

I put number three on the wall above the press, face out. Partly to look at it. Partly so I stop pretending I don't know which one I actually mean.