X

It marks the spot on maps and lips, where softly placed it is a tender spark, a harbinger of more. It is a penetrating beam of energy, illuminating in moderation, lethal in extreme. You can count with it too, but awkwardly. It is your vote. It is personification, the mark of the humble and illiterate, the anonymous. It is the identity chosen by an angry rebel who rejected a master’s legacy; and it is the symbol of a saviour who died upon its struts. Strange to be so eloquent, so useful in its brevity, yet underused, this always trailing X.