Lauryn Youden’s Dead Paper is a performative reading and ritual releasing both written and spoken language to the air. Embracing oral tradition, Youden invited participants to write their “ambiguities and desires” on paper with invisible ink while sharing crip knowledge and histories. Released to the fire, the heat acts as both a generative and destructive force, temporarily lending legibility to the invisible ink before consuming its substrate. This work uses fire to cast the visible spectrum as a mercurial reifier of illness and intention, while the body and the air hold experience in the realm of the invisible.