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.

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.

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.

They gather with notebooks, with sniffing and spit,
Pronouncing, “It’s barnyard! With cat ***! A bit.”
They frown at a Shiraz, they scold at a Zin,
And call Merlot mortal, the gravest of sin.

They drone about terroir, of slate and of lead,
While draining the joy from the glass in your hand.
But wine isn’t homework, it’s laughter, it’s cheer,
It’s Floyd with a saucepan, a smile, and more beer.

So let wine bores be solemn, austere, and uptight—
We’ll drink what we fancy, red, bubbly, or white.
And like Floyd we’ll declare, with a wink and a shout:
“Open another! We’ll sort it all out!”

The suitcase waits beside him,
its wheels whispering to the ground.
Beneath his coat the dog curls,
a lantern of warmth,
a small fire pressed against his ribs.

The years have softened the noise of living—
once brass and thunder,
now breath and hush.
And in that hush he finds a song:
not bright,
not fleeting,
but steady as a heartbeat.

Joy no longer strikes like lightning.
It lingers,
folded into the weight of a coat,
the patience of standing still,
the trust of a creature that leans into his chest.

Happiness is an ember,
glowing without demand,
refusing to fade.
Here, at the bus stop,
he is not waiting for tomorrow.
He is waiting for nothing at all,
content to be warmed
by what stays.

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?

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.

Sing, O Muse, of the Englishman abroad,
who strode into Gaul with tongue untrained,
armed not with verbs nor conjugations,
but with a loaf, a slab, a bottle—
trinity eternal of survival.

Behold the Baguette,
twin spears of wheat and fire,
their crusts crackling like the shields of Troy.
Lo! The Pâté de Campagne,
grey as storm-clouds, marbled as Olympus itself,
its noble fat a balm for weary travellers.
And there, the Rasteau, dark river of Dionysus,
2017 vintage—
a draught to embolden the timid,
to turn “Parlez-vous anglais?”
into a declaration of conquest.

He came unto Le Mans,
where the engines howled like Cerberus unchained,
and the track burned eternal with rubber and pride.
There, men wrestled not with swords,
but with pistons and petrol,
for one full day and one full night.

Yet our hero,
with only four words—
“Un café, s’il vous plaît”—
stood unshaken.
What need of eloquence,
when one holds the Bread of Ages,
the Meat of Peasants,
the Wine of Kings?

And should he perish,
let it be written:
Here lies the man who spoke no French,
yet feasted as though he owned the land.

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.

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.

There was a girl
who carried a lantern.
Small, yet unyielding,
its glow defied the dark,
tracing the path
her feet chose.

There was a warrior
returned from battle.
A fracture split his crown.
Through the wound
a shadow leaned—
silent, then whispering:
The lantern must be mine.
Without it, I am broken.

The girl said no.
She did not scream.
She did not flee.
Her silence was a shield.
She drew the lantern close
and stepped aside.

The shadow could not endure refusal.
It reached for steel.
In the marketplace of morning—
where bread was weighed,
where laughter was traded—
the shadow struck.
The lantern fell.
Its flame trembled,
and went out.

But the world was not silent.
A tide of voices rose.
Countless.
Insistent.
Inked in sorrow upon paper.
A chorus swelling against stone.
They pleaded for mercy.
They begged for the fracture
to be understood.
They named the shadow.
They cried to distant halls of power.
But still the walls did not bend.

The warrior was taken.
The shadow fell with him.
The rope spoke
where mercy would not,
its verdict unbending as oak.

Yet the lantern—
though broken—
was not lost.
It flickers still
in the courage of those who refuse,
in the quiet voices
that rise against injustice,
in the memory of the tide that came,
even when the world turned away.

Remember the girl with the lantern.

For every fracture casts a shadow.
Every shadow seeks what is not its own.
Yet still the lantern glows—
frail as breath,
fierce as memory—
enduring.

She raises her arm,
not in benediction,
but in the small rebellion
of capturing her own face
beneath the marbled theater of eternity.

Above her,
angels spill from drapery like loosened thoughts,
a pope extends his stone hand
in blessing or command—
who can tell anymore?
Even in stillness,
the gesture feels suspect.

The air is thick with centuries:
candles gutter,
gold leaf shimmers,
and the hush is not holy
but heavy—
like a silence trained to hide its wounds.

Faith was meant to be a door flung open,
a table where all might gather.
Instead, it became
a locked room,
its key guarded by men
who mistook power for grace,
and covered their sins
with vestments too ornate to touch.

Her phone, black as a psalm unsung,
catches her face where the saints cannot.
No angel stoops to cradle her doubt;
no Madonna reaches from the niche.
The statues are beautiful, yes—
but beauty can also be complicit,
a veil too finely woven
to let the cries through.

How many voices pressed
against these walls in vain?
How many children prayed
to be seen,
only to be folded into the architecture of silence?

She presses the shutter.
It is not worship,
but witness—
a fragile liturgy of selfhood
against a cathedral that claims eternity.

And in that instant,
her image lingers among the saints,
her living skin
a testament more holy
than marble ever dared to be.

They sit in dark suits,
the silence pressed
into their shoulders.

Around them,
cups half-drained,
water trembling
with a borrowed light—
even the sun
hesitates to intrude.

One raises his hand,
not in greeting,
but as if to measure
the air’s heaviness,
the burden of time
that does not move.

Behind them,
the chapel breathes—
hushed prayers
seep through stone,
the living speak of loss
while laughter drifts
from another table,
careless, unbroken.

This is their rhythm:
sip bitterness,
straighten ties,
hold vigil for the living
so the dead may be carried
with dignity.

But here, in the pause,
they are only men—
hands wrapped around coffee,
faces turned toward
the ordinary,
waiting with the weight
that never leaves them.

The earth is a child,
eyes wide with questions older than stone.
She holds no map,
only silence heavy as iron in her chest.

She asks: Where to?
but the sky does not answer,
only drifts its clouds across her brow
like forgotten prayers.

Forests kneel in shadow,
rivers coil like veins of time—
and still, the horizon offers nothing
but another horizon.

The stars lean low,
ancient witnesses burned hollow,
yet they cannot guide her;
their language has turned to ash.

She carries a seed in her hand,
small, unbroken,
the last ember of tomorrow.
Will she plant it in the desert,
or cast it into the sea,
or swallow it whole
to keep its promise hidden?

The child is not lost—
it is the world that is wandering,
asking its own bones
Where do we go when the ground forgets us?

And in that silence,
the earth breathes,
waiting,
for the answer that is also a beginning.