A long hall of pale stone. The walls looked bare until I walked deeper. Then the echoes appeared – silhouettes of the lives I almost lived.
Me in another city. Me boarding a train I never took. Me laughing with someone whose face I couldn’t quite see. Not regrets. Acknowledgments.
At the center, a glass sphere held the sum of my almosts. I touched it. It warmed. And the ache softened. I left lighter.
The Shifting City: “The Gallery of Echoes” (poem)
I walk into the hall of pale stone
and at first the walls look empty,
smooth as unbroken ice.
But then the air shifts,
and the room inhales,
and the outlines begin to rise.
Not portraits.
Not ghosts.
Just the faint blue silhouettes
of the lives I almost lived.
One flickers to my left –
a version of me boarding a train
I never took,
his coat catching the wind
of a city I never learned to pronounce.
He doesn’t look back.
Another stands at a window
in an apartment I nearly rented,
watering a plant I never owned,
humming a tune I never learned.
He seems content,
but he is not me.
A third sits at a café table
with someone whose face
is blurred by possibility.
Their laughter ripples
like a memory I can almost touch
but never quite claim.
I walk slowly,
and the echoes shift with me,
as if adjusting their distance
out of courtesy.
None of them accuse me.
None of them beckon.
They simply exist –
parallel lines
that never intersected
but still shaped the geometry
of my life.
At the center of the hall
a glass sphere waits,
its surface swirling
with faint colors
like breath on winter air.
I place my hand on it.
Warmth rises through my palm,
and for a moment
I feel every version of myself
that could have been –
not with longing,
not with grief,
but with a strange,
quiet recognition.
The sphere dims,
as if bowing,
and the echoes soften
into a gentle blue haze.
I exhale.
The hall exhales with me.
When I turn to leave,
the silhouettes remain behind –
not abandoned,
not dismissed,
but finally at rest.
I step back into the city
lighter than I entered,
carrying only the life
that is mine.