“Write what you know”, the old author adage prescribes. Here, a rumination on failure known. Systemic failure, most certainly represented, with statistics on social justice, environmental destruction, educational shortfalls, wealth disparity, art industry homogeny, all rendered by dipping sticks to take depth of each deficit. Personal failure as well, in representation, in allyship, in the ability to hold onto (much less render) the trauma of failure that disproportionately affects communities to which I am not a member. What good are statistics and figures in a culture that can just casually and blanketly deny the truth they portray? How do we confirm facts when data ceases to function due to mass misinformation and doubt? As white supremacist, alt-right groups, and conservative media outlets continue to push the Overton window toward a more casually ignorant, if not hateful environment of discourse, our very systems of confirming truth and reality are cast into confusion. As we turn to debating realities, science, and systemic injustice, our ammunition of graphs and figures is rendered futile. Here, that rendering literal, as our proof drowns at the bottom depth of the failure-well probed.