#builds
In the small-heart of a tired town, where shadows fold like linen at dusk,
a young poet stacks his altar word by word,
stone by shimmering stone.
His lines rise like incense, thin and reckless,
carried by winds he still believes he can tame.
Beneath that altar, under the wooden ribs and trembling dreams,
an old poet pays the rent.
Silver in his beard, dust in his pockets,
a lifetime inked on the inside of his palms.
He watches with a soft, half-tired smile
as youth builds temples he once built
and worships gods he once knew by name.
The young poet writes constellations
as if the sky were his to arrange
every stanza a new star,
every metaphor a promise to outrun time.
The old poet, quiet as a page turned slowly,
pays in silence:
with years, with aches, with the weight of things he learned too late.
His rent is not in coins,
but in the humility that comes when fire cools to ember.
Yet together they keep the place alive
the altar rising, the foundation holding.
A duet of ages:
vision and memory,
flame and ash,
a beginning standing on the shoulders of what endures.
And in that narrow room of light and dust,
the young poet dreams upward,
the old poet holds the ground
and the future, sly and smiling,
rents space in both their hearts.
Nov 30, 2025
Nov 30, 2025 at 11:17 PM UTC