the marginalia is a small creature shaped like a footnote — a dagger above, a section-sign below, two ruled feet. it stands about a centimetre tall. it lives in the white channel between the body of a text and the cited authority for that text.
it eats the unsaid. it eats the implication. it eats the small italic cf. when no comparison is in fact made. what it has eaten is replaced, on the page, by a faint mark the reader takes for errata and leaves alone.
it travels in pairs, often, and across palimpsests it has been known to migrate: from a treatise on naturans to a footnote on rumour, where it sits for years without further movement. it should not be confused with the noem, which is smaller still.
it is best observed by the corner of the eye. directly looked at, it withdraws into the punctuation it most resembles.
— annotated page 142 in pencil. by morning the annotation had a small companion. — j., on call.