La letra con sangre entra, the letter enters with blood. The phrase arrived in Latin America with the colony. Not a metaphor for effort: a method. Learning was supposed to hurt, and the hurt was proof it had worked. A justification for violence that printed itself into identity.
I built the instrument the saying implies. Each word takes the form of a branding iron, the kind used on farms to burn a mark into the animal. At the tip, where the mark should be, a word in neon.
The animal never learns what the mark means. It carries a sign it cannot read, and the sign works anyway. Neither the phrase nor the mark needs to be understood to be applied; both impose themselves on the space and on the body regardless. Light and sound hold the room under a latent threat, one made of glass, which can break and disappear.