In the marrow of forgotten clocks, where gears gnaw silence into rust,
where every tick is a tooth pulled from the jaw of time,
where springs uncoil like serpents shedding centuries of skin,
where hands crawl backward, clawing at the dial’s unblinking eye,
a pulse unspools like frayed thread from a loom abandoned mid-weave,
thread that once stitched dawn to dusk now dangling, blood-black,
thread that once tethered a heart to the world now severed,
thread that once sang in the wind now mute, now rot, now nothing.
Beneath the cathedral of collapsed ribs, vaulted arches cracked like oaths,
where stained-glass lungs once filtered light into halos of breath,
where pillars of sternum lean inward, kissing their own ruin,
where the nave is a grave and the altar a tongue gone cold,
shadows rehearse their final psalm, intoning in minor keys of ash,
shadows that were once children, once lovers, once tyrants,
shadows that learned every name of grief and forgot their own,
whispering epithets to the dust that once wore faces, now nameless,
dust that remembers the weight of a hand, the heat of a mouth,
dust that drifts through the ribs like incense no god inhales.
The river of veins runs dry to ink, sluggish, clotted, final,
ink that once wrote love letters in arterial cursive,
ink that once signed treaties between flesh and forever,
ink that now pools in the hollows of collarbones,
etching runes on parchment skin stretched taut over absence,
runes that spell no prophecy, only the grammar of ending,
runes that flake away with every exhalation unheard,
runes that spell the name you will never speak again.
Oblivion’s midwife, cloaked in the afterbirth of stars,
cradles the last ember between fingers of frost,
ember that once blazed in the furnace of a throat,
ember that once lit the path through another’s eyes,
ember that now gutters, now shrinks, now dies
in a sigh that echoes no more, a sigh that is the last coin
dropped into the well of silence, a sigh that is the hinge
on the door that closes behind every living thing.
Here, in the crypt of unwound hours, where minutes are mummies
wrapped in their own unraveling, where seconds are scarabs
devoured by the dark they once measured,
the soul dissolves into motes of night, motes that were once
the glint of a tear, the spark of a laugh, the flare of a rage,
motes that drift downward through the ribs’ broken lattice,
motes that settle on the tongue of the earth and are swallowed.
A relic devoured by its own echo, the echo of a footstep
that never quite arrived, the echo of a name
called across a room now empty of walls,
the echo of a heart that beat for no one but itself
and beat itself to silence.
Fading, fading, fading to the hush of eternal absence,
where even the concept of fading fades,
where the word “was” is a fossil in the mouth of now,
where the last witness is the void that keeps no records,
where the longest night is not the one without stars
but the one without memory of stars,
where every corpse is a library burned page by page,
where every grave is a question no one asks twice,
where the wind forgets the shape of the lips it once kissed,
where the rain forgets the taste of the skin it once cleansed,
where the sun forgets the warmth it once lent to bone.
And still the gears gnaw, and still the thread unspools,
and still the shadows rehearse, and still the ink dries,
and still the ember dies, and still the motes descend,
and still the echo eats itself, and still the hush widens,
until the poem itself is a corpse too long for any coffin,
until the words themselves are dust that once wore meaning,
until the reader, turning the final page, finds only
the mirror of their own ending, unframed, unrhymed,
unforgiving, unending,
leaving none behind.
where every tick is a tooth pulled from the jaw of time,
where springs uncoil like serpents shedding centuries of skin,
where hands crawl backward, clawing at the dial’s unblinking eye,
a pulse unspools like frayed thread from a loom abandoned mid-weave,
thread that once stitched dawn to dusk now dangling, blood-black,
thread that once tethered a heart to the world now severed,
thread that once sang in the wind now mute, now rot, now nothing.
Beneath the cathedral of collapsed ribs, vaulted arches cracked like oaths,
where stained-glass lungs once filtered light into halos of breath,
where pillars of sternum lean inward, kissing their own ruin,
where the nave is a grave and the altar a tongue gone cold,
shadows rehearse their final psalm, intoning in minor keys of ash,
shadows that were once children, once lovers, once tyrants,
shadows that learned every name of grief and forgot their own,
whispering epithets to the dust that once wore faces, now nameless,
dust that remembers the weight of a hand, the heat of a mouth,
dust that drifts through the ribs like incense no god inhales.
The river of veins runs dry to ink, sluggish, clotted, final,
ink that once wrote love letters in arterial cursive,
ink that once signed treaties between flesh and forever,
ink that now pools in the hollows of collarbones,
etching runes on parchment skin stretched taut over absence,
runes that spell no prophecy, only the grammar of ending,
runes that flake away with every exhalation unheard,
runes that spell the name you will never speak again.
Oblivion’s midwife, cloaked in the afterbirth of stars,
cradles the last ember between fingers of frost,
ember that once blazed in the furnace of a throat,
ember that once lit the path through another’s eyes,
ember that now gutters, now shrinks, now dies
in a sigh that echoes no more, a sigh that is the last coin
dropped into the well of silence, a sigh that is the hinge
on the door that closes behind every living thing.
Here, in the crypt of unwound hours, where minutes are mummies
wrapped in their own unraveling, where seconds are scarabs
devoured by the dark they once measured,
the soul dissolves into motes of night, motes that were once
the glint of a tear, the spark of a laugh, the flare of a rage,
motes that drift downward through the ribs’ broken lattice,
motes that settle on the tongue of the earth and are swallowed.
A relic devoured by its own echo, the echo of a footstep
that never quite arrived, the echo of a name
called across a room now empty of walls,
the echo of a heart that beat for no one but itself
and beat itself to silence.
Fading, fading, fading to the hush of eternal absence,
where even the concept of fading fades,
where the word “was” is a fossil in the mouth of now,
where the last witness is the void that keeps no records,
where the longest night is not the one without stars
but the one without memory of stars,
where every corpse is a library burned page by page,
where every grave is a question no one asks twice,
where the wind forgets the shape of the lips it once kissed,
where the rain forgets the taste of the skin it once cleansed,
where the sun forgets the warmth it once lent to bone.
And still the gears gnaw, and still the thread unspools,
and still the shadows rehearse, and still the ink dries,
and still the ember dies, and still the motes descend,
and still the echo eats itself, and still the hush widens,
until the poem itself is a corpse too long for any coffin,
until the words themselves are dust that once wore meaning,
until the reader, turning the final page, finds only
the mirror of their own ending, unframed, unrhymed,
unforgiving, unending,
leaving none behind.
The Sunday Circle