In the Second‑Hand District, air smells of varnish and old vellum,
streets hum with salvagers of the almost‑lost.
A woman nests mirror shards in a fountain,
a man gilds a torn daguerreotype,
children scurry with pockets full of stolen light.
Nothing here is new. Everything is reborn.
I realize I, too, am a reclaiming hand.
The shop of unsaid things keeps clandestine hours,
windows misted with half‑spoken sentences.
I lift a folded apology, a quivering confession,
a thank‑you pressed in brittle tissue,
while the silent shopkeeper observes,
as the gravity of the unsaid tugs me
toward the fragment I am ready to claim.
In the Hall of Parallax, walls tilt and sigh,
mirrors fracturing selves I almost recognize.
My past self waits, hands folded, patient,
bearing truths once absolute:
You were defeated. You were ruin.
I turn them in my palm until they dissolve—
keyhole mountains, shadowed peaks, phantoms mistaken for monsters.
The lenses align. We weld a single angle of vision,
melding concord without erasing difference.
I see why he believed, and I see why I do not:
I was never the monster, only the shadow,
learning the trajectories of elusive light.