He rose—not from gears,
but from laughter remembered.
The wind did not lift him;
it bowed,
as if recalling an older vow.

His wings, once rusted,
now shimmered with children’s breath—
each feather a story retold
in the hush between heartbeats.

The sky opened like a book
written in invisible ink,
and Tarnok read it
with the eyes of those
who never stopped believing.

Below, the Kingdom of Once
unfurled its forgotten banners:
slides gleamed like rivers of silver,
swings sang in braided tongues,
and bark chips pulsed
with the rhythm of return.

Arthur watched,
not as king,
but as witness—
his gaze a lantern
held aloft for the stars.

Tarnok soared,
not to conquer,
but to remember
how joy once moved
through metal and myth alike.

He flew through the garden
beneath the unsaid,
through the playground
stitched of vanished breath,
through the sky
where silence had learned to sing.

And the world,
for a moment,
was whole again—
a crown of wind,
a throne of light,
a kingdom reborn
in the shape of flight.

After the rain,
the streets gleam like peeled fruit.
The wind lies folded in the gutter,
a broken kite stitched with silence.

I am not bound to the ladder of hours,
not numbered among the candles of night.
Erase me,
and the air will soften,
as though absence were a hymn.

Your gaze drifts downward—
not to earth, but through it,
toward roots that dream of speaking.
Stillness gathers at your shoulders,
a cloak woven from unsung music.
The disc turns slowly,
a star rehearsing extinction.

Desire flickers:
I want, I un-want.
I know, I un-know.
The cup steams though nothing fills it,
the other darkens with invisible coffee.
Haste crosses the room,
a figure of feathers
with no face to wear them.

Crowds appear like statues half-carved,
their waxen throats glistening with quiet.
They do not wait for anything;
they wait because waiting is all they are.
Time lowers its rope into a glass well,
and the rope returns with water
that cannot be touched.
I step aside.
The hours unravel,
bright threads dissolving in rain.

I remember a garden before gardens,
its gates made of breathing feathers,
its branches tuned to an unseen choir.
There, silence was a river of light,
and fire spoke fluently
its secret, unbroken name.
That is the place I carry in fragments,
a lantern inside forgetting.

Now, after the rain,
the night gleams like a blade
dipped in velvet ink.
The wind is gone,
names shatter like porcelain birds,
and erasure flowers—
a black bloom fragrant with absence.

When silence grows unbearable,
the carriage without mirrors arrives.
It waits at the border
where reflections refuse their faces.
Step inside.
It will bear you—
not like the others,
never like the others—
to the garden stitched of vanished breath,
where stars wander unbuttoned from the sky,
and memory loosens its hands,
forgetting even the shape of forgetting.

He rose from the dreams of children—
those who saw dragons in playgrounds,
who spun springs into soaring flight,
chipped paint into shimmering scales.

Tarnok, the emerald guardian,
watched over the Kingdom of Once,
where slides gleamed like moonlit streams,
and swings hummed with the wind’s low hymn.

He thrived on laughter,
on the pulse of racing feet,
on shrieks of joy
that set his metal wings quivering.

But silence crept in.
The kingdom withered, its colors dulled.
Vines coiled tight,
and Tarnok stilled, his smile crumbling to rust.
Years passed.

The bark chips grew cold.
The air forgot its shimmer.

Then—Arthur.
A boy with quiet eyes,
heart humming with wonder’s faint song,
seeking the ghost of forgotten games.
He climbed Tarnok,
blind to the myth,
drawn by a spark in the rusted frame.

His laugh broke the air.
And the world remembered.
Vines bloomed, heavy with color.
The swings stirred, creaking awake.
The slide burned like polished steel.

Tarnok rocked,
not from wind,
but from joy reborn.
And deep beneath the playground,
the Kingdom of Once stirred,
its heartbeat pulsing with Arthur’s laugh,
as Tarnok’s wings dreamed of flight.