The light dissolves,
a slow hemorrhaging of
gold into bruised arteries
of the horizon. He
sits
where the stone of the
terrace meets the cold
insistence of the air,
a figure
carved from the same
silence
as the balustrade.
Before him, the forest
a receding tide. The
oaks
and ancient pines lose
their sharp, barren edges, surrendering
their green identity
to the creeping ink of
the blue hour.
It is a theft he does
not protest. He watches
the shadows climb
the valley walls with
a gaze so unblinking
so absolute, that the
boundary
of his skin begins to
fray.
There is no sudden
snap,
only a gentle
evaporation.
The ache in his joints
becomes the hum
of the rising wind;
The silver of his
hair,
the first frost of a
distant star.
He watches the
stillness until
he is no longer the
watcher,
but the thing being
watched.
The perspective
shifts—a quiet, cosmic inversion.
He is now
the cobalt depth of
the sky,
The long, violet reach
of the cooling earth,
The vast, indigo
consciousness
that settles over the
world.
From this height, he
looks down.
He sees a body—a
small, tethered knot of bone and memory—
Sitting in a wicker
chair
that has begun to
creak with the cold.
It is a curious relic,
that man.
A statue of salt and
spent years,
anchored to the dark
by the weight of a
heart
that still beats
like a muffled drum in
a hollow hall.
The evening looks
upon the old man with
a soft, dark pity.
how small he is,
tucked into the corner
of the porch,
a comma in a sentence
that has already been
spoken.
The evening wraps
its velvet arms around
his shoulders,
not to comfort, but to
claim—
until there is only
the terrace, the blue,
and the profound,
terrifying peace of
nowhere left to go