There was a traveler
not of roads, not of waves
but of whispers in the smoke
the breath of a dying god!

~
They called it Chronos.

~
He asked the stars
"Where does the road go when no one's walking?"

The stars flickered, drunk on riddles.

He asked the river
"Do you flow, or does time carry you?"
The river only laughed & twisting in its silver sleep.

~
So he sought the Graybeards
those who walked the edge of the end.

"Is time real?" he asked.

They studied their hands, maps of forgotten days.

"It must be," they sighed.
"It carved its name into us."

~
But the wind whispered between his ribs
"What if time is just a trick?"

~
So the traveler sat beneath a skeletal tree
watching the last leaf cling to the void.

"If no one counts my days do I still decay?"
"If no one dreams of yesterday did it ever breathe?"

~
&
as the leaf surrendered to the abyss
he saw it

~~
- Time was no river
No master
No prison.

~
- It was a phantom, a shadow
&
a god in retreat.

~
A joke
A whisper
A long
slow hallucination
&
we
we are its dream
we are its dream.