The architecture changes while the ink is wet. A gallery of mirrors where the glass refuses to hold the face. Step out into the courtyard, the stones are humming with a phantom weight I am building a fortress out of tomorrow's departures, Counting the pulse in the throat of the air, Waiting for the floorboards to remember how to fall. Every step a tremor, a fault line in the making. Dancing on the edge, learning how to break Hold the pendulum still, just long enough to name the center. But the horizon behaves like a startled bird. If I reach for the hem of your shadow, do I tear the cloth? The geography shifts between the breath and the word, A panic of borders, An anchor made entirely of smoke. There is a quiet violence in the way the light dies on the wall. A sudden conviction that the room has forgotten my name. We sit in the marrow of a beautiful hour, Yet I am already sweeping up the ash of its ending, Accusing the silence of hiding a blade, Blaming the shoreline for the rising of the tide. Hold the pendulum still, just long enough to name the center. But the horizon behaves like a startled bird. If I reach for the hem of your shadow, do I tear the cloth? The geography shifts between the breath and the word, A panic of borders, An anchor made entirely of smoke. To exist only in the collision, To feel the gravity only when the glass begins to break. Is it safer to burn the bridge while we are standing in the middle? Or to watch the water swallow the pillars one by one? The terror isn't the void; It is the sudden, blinding flash of the solid ground. The room settles into a fragile truce. The static in the wires slows its spin. I am here, in the white space between the tremor and the stillness, Learning the language of a door left unlatched, Neither running, Nor locking the world outside.
