Six Faces, One Word

A silver cube sits on the sill of a window, an inch on a side, its edges rubbed bright. The sun is on one face of it, and the shadow of a live oak is on another.

You put a fingertip on the sunlit face. It is cold. You put another on the glass behind it, and the glass is warm. You count to ten with both there. Nothing evens out. The fingertip on the metal starts to ache, and you leave it.

The same word is cut into every face, in small plain capitals: WHOEVER. You pick it up between finger and thumb and turn it a quarter and read the next. WHOEVER. You read all six, and the sixth is upside down.