A room tilts like a dream half-remembered.
Wooden slats above murmur their psalms
to shadows kneeling on concrete floors.

Two figures orbit a small round altar:
one cloaked in quilted vestments, back turned,
hair knotted like runes from forgotten rites,
leaning toward the silence between them.

The other—a sentinel in wool and glass—
eyes eclipsed by mirrored panes,
lips parted in mute invocation,
a hand lifted as if blessing the air.

Behind them, bottles gleam like reliquaries,
shelves sag with trinkets and untold gospels.
On the wall, a goddess erupts from plaster:
her gaze round, unblinking, immense.
Sunglasses devour the light,
her eternal pout a riddle—
mocking, or perhaps sanctifying,
the ritual below.

Is she the watcher, or the watched?
A mural of smoke and ether,
or an echo of souls
who once gathered here in steam and silence,
exchanging codes of warmth and touch
as though sacraments?

In this breath suspended—
where blur bends the edges of real—
what truths dissolve with the tilt of the frame?
Do we speak to flesh, or to phantoms?

The café hums like a chapel of prophecy.
A glance, a nod: veils unravel.
The fabric of the seen splits open,
inviting the wanderer to ask:

Are we not prayers etched on these walls,
waiting for the next stranger
to give us voice?

Bottles gather like old monks
each label a scripture,
each cork a sealed memory,
they lean against one another
in the cathedral of dust and glass.

The radio hums,
its silver mouth cracked open,
feeding me fragments of the world—
voices drowned in static,
a heartbeat carried on waves.

Outside, leaves press their faces
to the windowpane,
green shadows whispering
that time still breathes beyond
this small wooden shrine.

Wine holds centuries in its throat,
yet I sip only silence,
wondering if the voices inside
the bottles speak the same
as those inside the box of air.

Here, in this room of echoes,
the world arrives in splinters.
I cradle the dial like a compass,
turning it slowly—
seeking a signal, seeking a prayer.

The boat rises,
not of timber, not of sail,
but of shadow hammered into form,
a prow cleaving the air,
a wave frozen before it breaks.

Figures keep their vigil—
one looking forward,
one turned behind,
guardians of a silence older than speech.
Their chests are hollow,
as if the sea has carved its hunger through them,
as if the wind has taken what once was heart.

The horizon burns thin,
a thread between worlds,
where journeys begin,
where the dead are ferried,
where the living lean to listen.

No oars, no ropes—
only the earth’s tether,
only the sky’s weight.
Yet the vessel waits,
rocking in eternity,
a monument to passage,
to leaving and to return,
to the long memory of water.

In the hollow of the tree,
a silence curls upon itself,
knees drawn tight,
as if waiting for a dream to hatch.

The bark parts like ribs,
and within—
a figure of stone breathes
petals and shadow,
a sentinel stitched from dust.

Ellyllon drift through the cracks,
their laughter
a thin silver thread,
their wings—
a memory of moths dissolving in flame.

Even the roots lean inward,
drinking secrets,
learning how grief
can turn to fruit.

This is no shrine,
but a seam in the world
where time folds back on itself,
and the forgotten child
still listens
for a language
that once taught silence
how to bloom.

In the corner of the room
a chair waits,
its wood worn smooth
by years of weight and silence.

A hat leans careless
on its shoulder,
as if someone rose quickly,
promising to return.

The carpet holds shadows—
damp stains of footsteps
that linger longer than voices,
longer than warmth.

The room holds its breath.
Even the walls remember,
scratched with the silence
of what was left behind.