Alone With Winged Reflections

He prowls the corridors of sonatas,
rifling through Chopin’s nocturnes
like a burglar of forgotten rooms,
each note a keyhole,
each crescendo a door swinging open
to a childhood orchard,
where apples fell like red lanterns
into the dusk of his longing.

He stalks the margins of other poets,
their words like abandoned train stations,
dusty benches,
echoes of departures that never returned.

He presses his ear to their syllables,
listening for the whistle
that will carry him back
to the platform where his mother’s scarf
fluttered like a white flag
against the tyranny of time.

Memories do not come willingly
hiding as they do in the folds of curtains,
in the hush between violin phrases,
in the shadowed alleys of old libraries.

He hunts them with the hunger
of a man chasing ghosts through mirrors,
his breath fogging the glass
as if he could coax the past
to write its name there again.

Aloneness is his accomplice,
a silent partner in this crime of recall.
Together they kneel before the altar
of a cracked phonograph,
praying for the needle’s resurrection,
for the hymn of yesterday
to rise like incense
and perfume the sterile air
of his one-room kingdom.

Now, at the window high above the city,
he petitions the skyline:
Never leave me without the ache of remembering.
The streets below hum like a requiem,
and then…

A butterfly alights on the glass and moves forward,
wings opening like stained glass windows,
a cathedral of color against the gray pane.

Its gaze gentle, unwavering,

asking nothing.

The moment makes him feel no shame for wanting.
And in that fragile company,
he smiles as the city answers with silence
that feels like forever.

The butterfly keeps vigil,
a silent archivist at the edge of the void.