Somewhere, in a field of static snow, a violin lies unplayed, its strings breathing the hushed tension of storms caught between clouds. The bow, discarded, angles like a broken wing bent under a sky so gravid with noise it forgets to weep.
Each string hums an unspoken question: Why does silence gather such gravity? The wood remembers a hand that carved hymns from the void, its grain bearing witness to the weight of creation.
I watch from afar, a shadow swallowed by dusk, where soundless specters rise from the soil's yawning absence. Their mouths are mirrors, reflecting only the things we dare not say aloud.
Once, I held the bow myself, my breath the metronome of eternity. Each note spilled from my trembling hands like the lifeblood of gods we did not mean to summon. Their voices still echo, fragile filigrees caught in the harp of my ribs.
Now, even my shadow refuses me. The light fractures around it, falling into the fissures between longing and despair. Still, the violin waits, its patience the only hymn worth singing.
I bend to pick it up— the silence shatters. Each shard catches the light, spinning a constellation of unplayed songs.
And in the final note, a blade of sound cuts through me, splitting marrow from bone, memory from dream. The echo hangs like a question only the dead might answer, and I am left to wonder if it was ever meant to be played at all.