In the guts of commonplace, where fridges rust and dreams congeal, Fragments of memory shiver against septic walls— (Do I dare Collect another sound?) Ribs like tuning forks, tendons strung with metropolitan despair, The endless void whistles through hollowed cheek and brain, Burial chamber music leaking from forgotten stone, Echoes of a trauma never spoken, never claimed. I have heard the city murmur between sewer grates, Measured out my life in aqueous shimmers and rat-foot gallops, The street—indifferent—finds its purpose in decay, While I, instrument of flesh, resonate with nothing. Vibrations curl like smoke from abandoned memories, Eyes and tongue become instruments of listening— Who is this wanderer? What sounds escape? Predetermined outcomes scatter like dust, The ocean's current—vast and meaningless— Carries fragments of belonging: A rib A dream A forgotten note And in the irreverent trance of searching, I lose myself between silence and sound, Researching the past of a stone That remembers nothing. *Do I belong?* (The question dissolves) Here, in the power of bleakness, I am the sound collector— Hollow Listening Endless